| Birth Date: | 12 March 1943 |
| Nationality: | Tunisian |
| Fields: | Spectroscopy |
| Education: | PhD |
| Alma Mater: | Pierre and Marie Curie University |
| Thesis Title: | Application à l'étude de la raie 4047Å de mercure de la méthode à balayage magnétique (1978) |
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| Thesis1 Year: | and |
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Zohra ben Lakhdar Akrout (; born 12 March 1943) is a Tunisian spectroscopist specializing in developing new spectroscopic methods to study the influence of pollutants on the quality of air, water, and plants.[1] [2] [3] She earned in 2005 the L’Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science.
Ben Lakhdar graduated in 1968 from Pierre and Marie Curie University.[4] She earned her PhD from the same university in 1978 with a thesis entitled "Application à l'étude de la raie 4047Å de mercure de la méthode à balayage magnétique" (study of the line shape of 4047Å mercury line using a tunable magnetic field).[5] She went back to Tunisia to become professor in 1982 at the Tunis University and served as director of the Laboratory of Atomic Molecular Spectroscopy and Applications (LSAMA).[6] [7] She was a founding member of the Tunisian Physics Society and a founding member of the Tunisian Astronomy Society.[8]
She was elected in 1992 to the Islamic World Academy of Sciences.[9] She is a fellow of the African Academy of Science since 2006.[10] She became senior associate member at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP). She earned in 2005 the L’Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science for "experiments and models in infrared spectroscopy and its applications to pollution, detection and medicine".[11] She was identified as a Science hero by The My Hero Project.