Eleni Glykatzi-Ahrweiler, a prominent Greek historian of the Byzantine Empire who became the first woman rector of Paris’s Sorbonne University, died on Monday, February 16, aged 99, the Athens News Agency reported.

Greek President Constantinos Tassoulas paid homage to her by saying she “illuminated through her work the timeless dimension of the Greek identity and contributed in a decisive way to international recognition of Byzantium as a fundamental pillar of European civilization.”

Born in Athens in 1926 to a family of refugees from what was then Constantinople – now Istanbul – she developed an early passion for history. As a young woman, she moved to Paris to continue her studies, earning two doctorates there and meeting her husband, navy officer Jacques Ahrweiler, who died in 2010.

After rising quickly through France’s CNRS research body, Glykatzi-Ahrweiler moved to the Sorbonne to become a top professor of Byzantine studies, and in 1976 became the first woman rector of the famed Paris university in its 700-year history. She was then named head of the Academy of Paris, which oversees the capital’s entire education system, and a UNICEF goodwill ambassador.

She came to know famous cultural figures in France, such as Pablo Picasso and Simone de Beauvoir, and received many honorary doctorates and distinctions, including at Harvard University, and France’s Legion of Honor. The wide body of scholarly Byzantine work she established remains influential today.