Bodil Jerslev Lund

After leaving school, Jerslev first assisted her father by working in his pharmacy. On graduating, she spent half a year working in Rigshospitalet's pharmacy. In 1942, she was engaged as a scientific assistant in the organic chemistry laboratory at the Pharmaceutical College. After the war, in 1948 she spent a period at Oxford University carrying our research on X-ray crystallography under Dorothy Hodgkin. Later in the year, she moved to Princeton, New Jersey, where she worked as a researcher at Princeton University under Hugh S. Taylor. While in the United States, she married Christian Lund.^[2]

On returning to Denmark, in 1951 she became a junior lecturer at the Pharmaceutical College and in 1958 she was appointed professor of organic chemistry, heading the department until her retirement in 1989.^[1] In parallel, she carried out research on the structure of organic compounds with the assistance of X-ray crystallography.^[3] As a result of her research, the college was able to acquire modern X-ray equipment.^[1]

Bodil Jerslev Lund died in Hellerup on 21 December 2005, aged 86.^[4][5]

Lund was admitted to the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters in 1971 and to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1981. In 1982, she received the Danish Pharmaceutical College's gold medal. She was honoured as a Knight of the Order of the Dannebrog in 1965 and was promoted to Knight of the First Order in 1975.^[1]