Antonia Ferrín Moreiras, Spanish mathematician, academic, and astronomer (d. 2009)
Antonia Ferrín Moreiras (Ourense, May 13, 1914 – Santiago de Compostela, August 6, 2009) was a mathematician, professor and the first female Galician astronomer. Her main contributions to astronomy were works on stellar occultations by the moon, measures of double stars and astrometric measurements, as well as the determination of the passage of stars through two verticals. She accomplished all of this while she was working at the Observatory of the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC).Before the Spanish Civil War, she obtained degrees in chemistry and pharmacy from the USC, earned her teaching diploma and studied Exact Sciences, the name for mathematics, for two years. She obtained her degree in mathematics in the Complutense University of Madrid some years later.In 1963 she became the first Spanish woman to defend a thesis that addressed the issue of astronomy: Observaciones de pasos por dos verticales (in English, Observations of passages of stars through two verticals). This thesis was also the first defended in the Faculty of Mathematics of the USC.Economic hardship forced her to study and work at the same time, but she earned scholarships that helped her reach her academic goals.