Ressenya
Graduated with honours in Natural Science by the University of Barcelona in 1949. In 1956, she read her thesis, which awarded her the University of Barcelona Doctorate Extraordinary Prize in 1959 and the Premio Leonardo Torres Quevedo by the CSIC (Spanish National Research Council) in 1957. She became an associate professor at University of Barcelona in 1957. In 1963 she was given chair in geology, first at University of Oviedo and, from 1968 until she retired, at Complutense University of Madrid.
Her research has been in relation to stratigraphy and paleogeography in the Permian-Triassic.
She was State Secretary of Universities and Research between 1982 and 1985, director of the Spanish College in Paris and, between 1996 and 2000, senator for Barcelona.
Justificacions
- She was the third woman to obtain chair at a Spanish university, and the first and only during a long time in the field of geology.
- She was passionate about the greatest of the mass extinctions, the Permian-Triassic extinction, which caused the disappearance of 96% of species 250 million years ago.
- She specialised in Triassic-Permian stratigraphy, an agitated era full of changes, just as the political period that she lived through.
- Her love for geology and her fight for democracy and freedom won her countless awards and recognitions from different universities and the Spanish and French governments.
Biografia
Carmina Virgili i Rodón was a Catalan geologist, professor and politician who fought for the inclusion of women in science.
Her father, Guillermo Virgili, was an auditor at Generalitat de Cataluña (regional government). He was responsible for economic issues regarding transfers from the capital. Her mother, Carmen Rodón, was a pharmacist and teacher in the school of agriculture. In 1939, after the Spanish civil war, they both were removed from their jobs.
Carmina Virgili completed her primary and secondary school years in Barcelona. In 1949 she graduated in Natural Science by the University of Barcelona, and in 1959 she obtained her doctorate in Geology at that same university, receiving the Extraordinary Prize. Not long after graduating, she started working as an assistant apprentice and, later on, in 1958, she became an associate professor to doctor Lluís Solé. In 1963 she was appointed chair of Stratigraphy and Historial Geology at University of Oviedo, where she remained until 1698. That year, she was appointed chair at the faculty of Geological Science at University of Madrid, now Complutense University, where she was also head of the Economic Geology department at the CSIC from 1968 to 1981.
She was a founding member of the Sedimentology Spanish Group and the Mesozoic Group. During her life as a scholar, she held many responsibility positions in Spain and France, thus promoting scientific exchanges between the two countries.
- Professeur associé at Louis Pasteur University in Strasbourg, France (1972-1973).
- Associate professor at Strasbourg University (1974).
- Dean of the Faculty of Geology in Madrid (1977-1980).
- Director of Collège d'Espagne at Cité International Universitaire in Paris (1987-1996).
Virgili was the third woman to obtain chair at a Spanish university and the first and only during a long time in the field of geology. She was always active to promote the inclusion of women in scientific areas and she was part of the Researcher and Technologist Women Association from its creation in 2001.
From 1982 to 1985 she was a State Secretary of Universities and Research during president Felipe Gonzalez's administration. She appointed Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba as head of her cabinet.
She was elected in 1996 as a PSC senator for the province of Barcelona, a position that she held for the entire term, until 2000. She was vice president of the first Mixed Commission of Scientific Research and Technological Development and deputy vice president of the Special Commission for the evaluation of euthanasia.
She passed away on November 21st in Barcelona and left her body to science.
Obres
El Tríasico de los Catalànides (1958)
El Jurásico de Asturias (Norte de España) (1971)
“Le Permien en Espagne”. Article in The Continental Permian in Central, West and South Europe (1976)
Problemas de la cronoestratigrafía del Trías en España (1977)
Cartografía del Triásico y Pérmico del Borde Oriental del Sistema Central y Rama Castellana de la Cordillera Ibérica (1980)
El relleno posthercínico y la sedimentación mesozoica (1983)
El Triásico (1985)
The Permian-Triassic transition: Historical review of the most important ecological crises with special emphasis on the Iberian Peninsula and Western-Central Europe (2008)
La Geologia: dels mites a la Ciència (2004) on Charles Lyell.
Enfocament Didàctic
Biology-geology in 4th of ESO
Documents
