Irina Rakobolskaja

While a physics student at Moscow State University, Irina Vyacheslavovna Rakobolskaya, along with seventeen of her fellow students, joined the Red Army's air force, where she served as chief of staff (and eventual historian of) what became the (all-female) "Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment of the Red Army" where the pilots would fly unarmored and lightly armed biplanes on bombing runs against the Germans, who disparagingly called the pilots "night witches"--a epithet proudly accepted by the pilots. After the war, Rakobolskaya excelled as a physicist and researcher, educator, and college administrator, teaching at her Alma mater of Moscow State University as a physics professor from 1977, and being appointed Distinguished Professor (a lifetime appointment) in 1996.