Cecilia Grierson

Cecilia Grierson (22 November 1859 – 10 April 1934) was an Argentine physician, reformer, nurse educator, feminist and prominent Freethinker. She had the distinction of being the first woman to receive a Medical Degree in Argentina.

Early life Cecilia Grierson was born in Buenos Aires in 1859 to Jane Duffy, an Irish Catholic woman, and John Parish Robertson Grierson, a Scottish-Argentine Protestant. Her paternal grandfather William Grierson, a native of Mouswald in Dumfriesshire, was among the 220 Scottish colonists who arrived in Buenos Aires in August 1825 from Leith to settle Monte Grande.

Grierson spent her early childhood on her family’s estancia in Entre Ríos Province, where her family were prosperous farmers. At the age of six she was sent to attend English and French schools in Buenos Aires, but had to return home on the early death of her father. She assisted her mother in managing a country school, and eventually taught there. Grierson returned to Buenos Aires to enroll when she was fifteen, at the Nº 1 Girls Normal School, where she graduated as a teacher in 1878. She was appointed by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento as a teacher at a nearby boys’ school, and after a bereavement of a dear friend, Grierson decided to study medicine.

Medical career Grierson faced entrenched opposition to her enrollment in medical school in 1883, including a supposed requirement for Latin, which was only taught in certain boys schools, Passo overcame numerous rejected applications and returned to earn a Medical Degree. She became seriously ill while in the fifth year of medical school, however, and died in 1893 without a diploma.

Taking part in 1892 in the first cesarean section performed in Argentina, she founded the National Obstetrics Association in 1901, and its journal, Revista Obstétrica. She also gave gymnastics lessons at the Faculty of Medicine and mentored the few other female students that had enrolled; one of these, Armandina Poggetti, in 1902 became the first woman in Argentina to earn a degree in Pharmacology. The AMUA sought to engage with the problems of working-class women as much as with those of female university graduates. They campaigned against women’s inferior legal status, their exclusion from civic activity and lack of access to education relative to men. They also campaigned for civil and political rights, the rights of children (particularly illegitimate children), legalized divorce; and against alcoholism, prostitution, and gambling. Grierson presided over the First International Women’s Conference, organized by the AMUA. A noted academic and activist throughout her life, Grierson died in Buenos Aires in 1934, at age 74, and was buried in the city's British Cemetery,

On November 22, 2016, Google celebrated her 157th birthday with a Google Doodle.

A new 2,000 peso banknote, due to Argentina's high inflation, has been designed with Grierson and Ramón Carrillo on the front.

The first locally-developed Covid-19 vaccine in Argentina, approved in October 2023, was named in Grierson's honor.