Her upbringing inspired Van Dishoeck to gain an interest in science and have the desire to do great things in the world of chemistry.

Her interests began shifting toward chemical physics soon after, with quantum chemistry being one of the main focal points of her senior project research.

At that time, Van Dishoeck’s boyfriend and future husband, Tim de Zeeuw, studied astronomy and finished a course on discoveries of interstellar molecules.

[5] While studying with Dalgarno in 1980, she switched her major to astrochemistry and completed her PhD on the excitation and breaking up of molecules within interstellar gas clouds.

She then returned to Cambridge, MA, to receive a position in Harvard’s Society of Fellows to continue her outstanding research on the interstellar medium.

[8][9] Ewine van Dishoeck’s work on astrochemistry was instrumental in answering how interstellar gas and dust can transform into living organisms.

In her lab research, Van Dishoeck set up interstellar cloud models; she compared her tests against actual observations.

[28] In 2022 Van Dishoeck was awarded the Fritz Zwicky Prize for Astrophysics and Cosmology[29] and the Niels Bohr International Gold Medal.

[30] Van Dishoeck is married to Tim de Zeeuw,[2] a professor of astronomy at Leiden University who was Director General of the European Southern Observatory from September 2007 to 2017.