Mª Josefa Molera

María Josefa Molera Mayo (Isaba, Navarra, 1921- Madrid, 2011) was a research professor at the CSIC, developing most of her scientific activity at Blas Cabrera Institute of Physical Chemistry, (IQFR) of Madrid, as a chemist expert in kineticists and chromatographic techniques, she is considered a pioneer of Spanish chromatography. She also taught French and English at a secondary school (1942-48), and as an internship assistant at the Chair of Technical Chemistry at the Central University of Madrid.

In 1942, she obtained a degree in Chemical Sciences, after completing all five courses in three years, and received a doctorate in 1948 under the direction of Antonio Rius Miró, after being rejected as a doctorate for being a woman by Julio Casares Gil. By her own merits and being a CSIC collaborator she received the prestigious Ramsay Memorial Fellowship Trust, which allowed her to work in the Physical Chemistry Laboratory of the University of Oxford (England), the period 1950-51, under the direction of the director of the same, Prof. Sir C.N. Hinshelwood, Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1956. She completed her training starting in August 1959 to work in the Department of Chemistry-Physics of the University of Sheffield with Prof. G.B. Porter, who received in 1968 the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Possibly, she built the first gas chromatograph in Spain, which she used for the characterization of wine with the pioneers María Dolores Cabezudo and Marta Herráiz.

Her early and pioneering activity in gas chromatography earned her the appointment of founding president of the hitherto existing Spanish Society of Chromatography and Related Techniques in 1973. She received, among others, the CSIC Alfonso X El Sabio Prize (1966), Perkin-Elmer Prize (1967), was awarded the Medalla de Química de la Real Sociedad Española de Física y Química (Chemistry Medal of the Royal Spanish Society of Physics and Chemistry) and was an Honorary Member of the "Groupement pour l'advancement del Méthodes Spectroscopiques et Physicho-Chimiques d'Analyse (GAMS, 1975). She trained leading scientists and members of the Spanish chemical industry in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Carrascosa, A.V. (2012): “Molera Mayo, María Josefa”. In Diccionario Biográfico Español, Tomo XXXV, Mestre y Bosch-Montoya, pg. 383-384. Ed. Real Academia de Historia, Madrid.