Entre rocas y remedios: Josefina Pérez Mateos (1904-1994), pionera de la Geología en España

Abstract

An extensive biography of Josefina Pérez Mateos (1904-1994) is presented, from a double perspective, that of a pharmacist and that of a scientist dedicated to Earth Sciences. She kept a pharmacy open in Madrid, practically without interruption, between 1929 and 1965. At the same time, she developed a teaching and research career at the University of Madrid, from 1935, and, between 1940 and his retirement in 1974, at the National Museum of Natural Sciences and at the Institute of Edaphology and Plant Physiology of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), where she held the position of Research Professor. She stands as one of the first women in Spain to dedicate herself professionally to geology. The first stage of her research stood out for the studies of mineral spectrochemistry, initially applied in her two doctoral theses, in Natural Sciences and in Pharmacy. Her training stays in the laboratories of Profs. Edelman and Correns, in the Netherlands and Germany, respectively, allowed her to introduce the techniques of the mineralogical study of sediments in Spain. Promoter of the foundation of the Spanish Group of Sedimentology, and presidenteditor of the International Association of Sedimentology, researchers were trained in their Sedimentary Petrography and Soil Mineralogy laboratories of the CSIC, who continued with the development, improvement and application of sedimentological and edaphic research.