Helen Elizabeth Ross

Helen Elizabeth Ross was born in London in 1935 with all her grandparents hailing from Scotland. Her paternal grandfather, Sir James Stirling Ross from Edinburgh was married to Christina MacDonald Ross from Arbroath. Helen studied Psychology and Philosophy at Oxford University, and obtained a Ph.D. from Cambridge University in 1966 for a thesis on weight illusions. She lectured in Psychology at Hull University from 1965-68. She moved to Stirling University in 1969, becoming a Reader in 1983. She did research on the perception and performance of divers, and also astronauts. She ran experiments on mass perception and motor skills in astronauts during the first NASA-ESA Spacelab Mission in 1983 and the German D-1 Mission in 1985. She held fellowships from the European Space Agency and the Royal Society at the DFVLR Institute for Aerospace Medicine, Bonn, from 180-81. She is the author of "Behaviour and Perception in Strange Environments" (Allen and Unwin, 1974), "The Mystery of the Moon Illusion" (Oxford University Press, 2002) and many other publications. Helen completed the Cùrsa Comais in Gaelic at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig in Skye in 2007. She is a fellow of the British Psychological Society and the Royal Society of Edinburgh.