Snapping to attention the phenomenal contribution of the Danish seismologist Inge Lehmann, search engine Google hails the pioneering scientist with a Doodle on its front page.

Inge Lehmann is credited with a revolutionary finding that changed our perception of the earth, by revealing the existence of an inner core, almost eight decades ago. Google celebrates her 127th birthday with an illustration that shows Earth sliced into two parts with its molten core shining like a star.

Google commented, “Inge used deduction and evidence to discover something unseen. Today’s doodle sheds light on her powerful but invisible discovery. Doodler Kevin Laughlin helps us experience the gift Inge illuminated for the world by revealing it as a glowing object”.

Inge Lehmann died in 1993 at the age of 104. She extensively studied earthquakes to discover the existence of an inner core in the Earth. She confirmed the presence of two layers; the inner and outer in the earth’s structure and thus, redefined the strategy to study earth.

Her nephew Niles Groes describes her using cardboard cards to register the velocity of propagation of the earthquakes to all parts of the globe to propound new theories of Earth.

Lehmann was educated at a mixed gender school quite unlike her contemporaries, as women back then in 1880’s were not bestowed with such rights. Soon she realized the apathy and was much frustrated with the treatment meted to women in science.

In 1925, Lehmann became an assistant to Professor N E Norlund at the University of Copenhagen. During this phase of her career, Lehmann came into contact with the leading seismologists in Europe as Norlund was planning to establish seismological stations in Denmark and Greenland.

In 1971, Lehmann was awarded the William Bowie medal, the highest honour of the American Geophysical Union. She was then described as ‘the master of a black art for which no amount of computerizing is likely to be a complete substitute’.