Celia Brañas

Celia Brañas Fernández Miranda (20 May 1880 – 12 June 1948) was a Spanish scientist and teacher who fought for the education and inclusion of women into the scientific community in Spain.

Early life Celia Brañas Fernández Miranda was born on 20 May 1880 in A Coruña, the daughter of Consuelo Fernández Miranda from Betanzos and Gonzalo Brañas Sánchez-Boado, a journalist, writer and pharmacist. Her older brother Gonzalo Brañas Fernández (1866–1948) was also a scientist. Her paternal uncle (her father's half brother) was Alfredo Brañas Menéndez, professor at the Law Faculty of the University of Santiago de Compostela and a leading representative of Galician conservative reactionism.

Education Brañas studied at the Normal School in A Coruña, where she qualified as both an elementary and higher level teacher. She then studied for the Baccalaureate at the local Secondary School. She passed the Reconocimientos de productos comerciales y Prácticas de Laboratorio (Recognition of Commercial Products and Laboratory Practice) course at the Escuela Superior de Comercio. Brañas then attended the University of Santiago de Compostela where she took courses in Mineralogy and Botany, Zoology, Physics and Chemistry, considered the preparatory course for the Faculty of Science.

Her vision of science teaching echoed the cutting edge teaching developments of the era, using "active teaching" methods. In a handwritten memoir, "Las Ciencias físicas y naturales en las Normales de Maestras", she emphasised the "eminently practical and applied nature" of the subjects and advocated teaching in which theory was accompanied by "experimental demonstration". She advocated taking students on visits to factories and workshops, where they could record observations in notebooks for subsequent explanation and discussion in class, emphasising the "great pedagogical value (of) walks and excursions, especially for the study of Natural History". Faced with the lack of resources in the laboratories of teacher training colleges, she proposed practical activities using everyday objects and described examples of physics and chemistry experiments that could be carried out with simple, accessible materials.

In 1922, she secured a two-month grant from the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios e Investigaciones Científicas(es) to undertake histology practice in the laboratories of the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales (National Museum of Natural Sciences).

She was also a member of the local board of trustees for vocational training in A Coruña.