Elena Kazimirtchak-Polonskaïa

In 1928, she graduated from University of Lviv. From 1932 to 1934, she was an assistant at the Astronomical Observatory of the University of Warsaw. From 1945, she taught mathematics and astronomy at the Kherson State University. In 1948, she became a researcher, then a senior researcher at the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union.[2] In November 1951, she was dismissed from work. In 1952, she was arrested on suspicion of "espionage",[3] and held from January to August, by the USSR State Security Committee. She was acquitted and released.

In 1953-1956 she was an associate professor at the Department of Higher Mathematics of the K. D. Ushynsky South Ukrainian National Pedagogical University. In 1964 she became a member of the International Astronomical Union . From 1967 to 1985, she helped organize All-Union and international astronomical seminars and symposia. From 1976 to 1978, she was the head of the scientific group on the dynamics of small bodies at the Astronomical Council of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union.[4] Polonskaïa studied in-depth the Leonids, a prolific meteor shower.

She died on 30 August 1992. She was buried in the cemetery of astronomers at the Pulkovo Observatory.

• In 1969, she won the F. A. Bredikhina prize for her research on short period comets and their orbital evolution.[1]
• Asteroid 2006 Polonskaya, discovered by Nikolai Chernykh at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory on 22 September 1973, was named after her.[1] The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 1 September 1978 (M.P.C. 4481).[5]