Emma Irene Åström

Emma Irene Åström (27 April 1847 – 3 July 1934) was a Finnish teacher and Finland's first female university graduate.

Early life Åström was born in 1847 in Taivassalo, in the Turku and Pori Province of the Grand Duchy of Finland. Her parents were Justiina Jakobsson, a servant, and Carl Åström, a surveyor. She was the oldest of five children. In 1853, the family moved to Åland, a Swedish-speaking region of Finland, where Emma Åström was raised to speak Swedish and attended a school in Finström.

Education She was sent to the Jyväskylä Teachers' College in 1865 with the persuasion of local clergy members, and the college's director, Uno Cygnaeus, served as her unofficial guardian. Encouraged by Ernst Bonsdorff, the school's mathematics teacher, Åström decided to apply to a Finnish university. Although Cygnaeus initially refused to support the idea, he arranged, through his colleague Cassie von Kothen, for Åström to study at the University of Helsinki. In 1886, Åström returned to Ekenäs Teachers' College, where she worked as a Lector Despite this, Åström once said: "There is no point in calling me a pioneer, because I have never consciously been one." A biography, Emma Irene Åström, Finlands första kvinnliga filosofie magister, was written by Margit Åström and published in 1967.