Born: Unknown, Chile (assumed)
Died: Unknown
Country most active: Chile
Also known as: NA
The following was written by Nina Baker and is excerpted from the book From Alchemy to Transport Phenomena: A Global History of Women in Chemical Engineering.
The first female chemical engineering graduates from the Escuela de Ingeniería Química, in Valparaiso, were María De La Luz Ostalé and Cecilia Barra in 1955. Barra went on to become one the school’s first female academics and, with Inés Santa María, was considered key to the growth of the School in the 1960s.
After the university reform of 1967, they moved to the Federico Santa María Technical University to found the current Department of Chemical Engineering of that university. Prof. Santa María researched marine pollutants and how to remove them into at least the late 1980s. Prof. Barra researched metallocenes and was married to one of Chile’s most prominent chemical engineers, Professor Alejandro Livingstone Bianchi. It would not be until 2005 that the school had its first female head, María Victoria García.