These contributions helped Lisitzin become the first woman elected to the Math and Physics division of the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters in 1960, and earned her an honorary professorship in 1965. In 1961, director Ilmo Hela asked her to be acting director during his two year sabbatical in Monaco. This required an official decree from the Finnish government allowing women to direct a scientific department, which was passed just in time. Her studies culminated in the textbook "Sea Level Changes" (1974), which was notable for synthesizing meteorological and seasonal factors with long-term secular trends (even before the effects of global warming were widely appreciated), recalculating the rate of land uplift across Scandinavia, geological evidence of widespread change elsewhere, seiche waves, and anthropological discussion of legends of universal floods. The book received at least 500 citations in peer-reviewed studies, despite being published in English, not one of Lisitzin's native languages but one of nine she spoke fluently.