Eline Tolstoy

Eline (Elizabeth) Tolstoy (born 1965) is a Dutch astronomer who has contributed to understanding of the formation and evolution of dwarf galaxies through the study of their resolved stellar populations. Tolstoy has held positions in Germany and at Oxford University. Since 2001, she has been affiliated with the University of Groningen. Tolstoy's work, which she describes as 'Galactic Palaeontology', aims to shed light on the broader cosmological processes involved in galaxy formation and evolution.

Life and education Eline Tolstoy was born to Ivan Tolstoy and Margie Lugthart in Scotland , where she grew up. She gained a BSc (Hons) from the University of Edinburgh in 1988. She studied at Leiden University (doctoral, 1990) and then in 1995, she received her doctorate from the University of Groningen, under the supervision of A. Saha, Piet van der Kruit and Harvey Butcher. The title of her thesis was `Modeling the resolved stellar populations of nearby dwarf galaxies'.

Post-doctorate career She worked as an ESA Postdoctoral Fellow, at ST-ECF Garching, Germany (1996–1998), followed by an ESO postdoctoral fellowship, Garching, Germany (1998–2000). She spent a year at Oxford University as Gemini Support Scientist.

She has been working at the University of Groningen since 2001. In 2007, she received a Vici grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research. She has been a full professor at the Kapteyn Institute of the University of Groningen since 2011.

Tolstoy is the Dutch project leader for the MICADO instrument that accompanies the European Extremely Large Telescope.