Josefina Castellví: Microbiologist, oceanographer and pioneer of Spanish research in Antarctica

• Main Authors: Balagué, Vanessa, Vila, Magda
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: Antarctic; Argentine; Española; Estrada; Livingston Island; Antarc*; Antarctica; Antártida
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10261/272147

[EN] Josefina Castellví was born in Barcelona on July 1, 1935. Her parents, with quite advanced ideas for the time, encouraged their daughters to study so that they would be independent. Pepita, as she likes to be called, graduated in Biological Sciences, specializing in marine microbiology and oceanography at the Sorbonne University at a time when these disciplines were a rarity in Spain. In 1960 he joined the Fisheries Research Institute (seed of the Institut de Ciències del Mar de Barcelona), where he wrote his doctoral thesis and participated in his first oceanographic campaigns, not without the difficulty of having to fight for his place on the oceanographic vessels for the fact of being a woman. Although she does not like to be called a pioneer, in the southern summer of 1984, Pepita participated in an Argentine oceanographic expedition together with the scientist Marta Estrada and the journalist Charo Nogueira, which would make them the first Spanish women to set foot in Antarctica. Later, in 1986, she was part of the CSIC group that camped on Livingston Island to claim a Spanish Antarctic scientific base. And it worked, because the following year she participated in the installation of the Juan Carlos I Spanish Antarctic Base (BAE), which she managed during the years 1988-1993. This made her the first woman in the world to be the head of a scientific base in Antarctica. [.] [ES] Josefina Castellví nació en Barcelona el 1 de julio de 1935. Sus padres, con ideas bastante avanzadas para la época, animaron a sus hijas a estudiar para que fueran independientes. Pepita, como le gusta que la llamen, se graduó en Ciencias Biológicas, especializándose en microbiología marina y oceanografía en la Universidad de la Sorbona en un tiempo en el que estas disciplinas eran una rareza en España. En 1960 se incorporó al Instituto de Investigaciones Pesqueras (semilla del Institut de Ciències del Mar de Barcelona), donde realizó su tesis doctoral y participó en sus primeras campañas oceanográficas, no sin la dificultad ...