Draft:Victoria Guasti

María Clara Victoria Guasti Mirón (Tehuantepec, August 12, 1927 – Mexico City, April 25, 2013) was a Mexican chemist with relevant contributions to nuclear chemistry. She was a pioneer in research on beneficial applications of nuclear energy during the second half of the twentieth century.

Childhood
Victoria Guasti was born on August 12, 1927 in Tehuantepec, Oaxaca. Her mother was Elvira Mirón (1897-1966), a zapoteco woman who worked as a maid. Her father was Pedro Guasti (1879-1968), a hotel owner who had immigrated from northern Italy as a teenager.

In 1933 the Guasti Mirón family moved to Mexico City, where Victoria initially attended the “Luis Murillo” elementary school, the secondary school Number 6, and later attended high school at the Colegio Anglo Español.

Higher education
Pedro Guasti encouraged his daughters to study university degrees. Hoping that she would establish a perfumery that would design the best scents to captivate the privileged classes, Pedro enrolled Victoria in the Berzelius School of Chemistry (now the Ibero-American University). During her university career, Victoria distinguished herself by her excellent academic performance.

She graduated as a Pharmaceutical Chemist and Biologist on June 13, 1951 with the thesis entitled “Chronic appendicitis due to the presence of parasitic cysts” developed at the General Hospital.

Marriage
Victoria married Alonso Fernández González (1928-2014), then a young engineer, on October 31, 1953. The wedding was celebrated by Luis Verea, director of the Berzelius Faculty of Chemistry. Soon after, Alonso was accepted to a master's program in California and the couple moved to the US.

In 1955 the couple moved again to Manchester, England, where Alonso did his PhD. Victoria returned to Mexico City in 1957 and Alonso in 1959.

Victoria Guasti and Alonso Fernández had three children, Teresita, Manuel and Alonso.

Contributions to nuclear chemistry
Victoria Guasti was interested in the effects of radiation from radioisotopes.

Before graduating, she set up a clinical analysis laboratory opposite the Metropolitan Theatre (Mexico City) with some of her university classmates. After graduating, she simultaneously accepted a position in a homeopathic pharmacy and another in the pharmacy of Petróleos Mexicanos, where she worked in the preparation of prescription preparations.

The experience of the recent war and the technological progress of the 1950s motivated Victoria Guasti to seek beneficial uses of nuclear energy. To this end, she attended courses given by the National Institute of Nuclear Energy (INEN) in the early 1960s on the production, separation and detection of radioisotopes, and current developments in nuclear chemistry. During the first years of her marriage, she was forced to take a break from her professional career. In 1962 Victoria Guasti re-joined the National Nuclear Energy Commission as a process analyst chemist in the Crystallography Laboratory, working part-time.

Her position as an analytical chemist at the Crystallography Laboratory allowed her to participate in different research projects, including “Obtaining lithium fluoride monocrystals using induction heating,” “Silver segregation in sodium chloride monocrystals,” and “A method to obtain potassium iodide crystals with impurities in a controlled atmosphere.”

In 1966, during an internship at the University of Reading, she collaborated with the Department of Chemistry in the quantitative analysis by chemical separation of sodium and potassium.

Upon her return to Mexico in 1967, Victoria Guasti went back to the INEN, this time to the Laboratory of Industrial and Radiation Applications. She worked on obtaining activated carbon by chemical methods or by irradiation with nuclear particles from black ash (waste from the Peña Pobre paper mill) as raw material. Simultaneously she began to explore the effects of radiation on the determination of aromatics in a normal oil.

In 1972 Victoria Guasti joined the Centre for Nuclear Studies of the UNAM as a full-time researcher. Throughout the 1970s she worked on the beneficial effects of radiation. She collaborated in the development of several projects:


 * 1) Preservation of peaches, pineapples, papayas, tangerines, melons, and other fruits by gamma irradiation.
 * 2) Physical changes induced in radiation-tanned and untanned hides.
 * 3) Changes in black, red, and bay beans and "fuerte and Hass" avocados irradiated with gamma for preservation.
 * 4) Determination of the minimum irradiation dose for the destruction of some pathogenic bacteria in fresh colostrum.
 * 5) Sterilization of wood sawdust to be used as bedding for laboratory animals with gamma radiation.
 * 6) Determination of protein N, vitamins and amino acids and microbiological control in a gamma-irradiated food for use in animal farms.
 * 7) Sterilization of pig bloodserum for tissue culture.
 * 8) Sterilization of intrauterine devices for fertility control.
 * 9) Drugs labelled in the treatment of cerebral cysticercosis.

From these projects she participated in three professional theses, the publication of 10 research papers and the teaching of lectures in national and foreign forums.

In the 1970s she also collaborated in the organization and delivery of lectures in the Science for Children program developed by the Mexican Society of Chemistry. Within that program he offered talks such as “Irradiation of Fruits with Gamma Rays,” “Man and Animals,” “Taste and Ripeness Tests in Non-Irradiated Tropical Fruits” and “The Importance of Cow Colostrum and Milk.”

In 1980, Victoria took a sabbatical to study courses at the Faculty of Chemistry, the Institute for Research in Applied Mathematics and Systems (IIMAS) and the National Institute for Nuclear Research (ININ). She attended courses in analytical chemistry, applied statistics, general guidelines for the planning of experiments and radiation protection. Furthermore, she developed an original research project that proposed using gamma radiation to inactivate the pathogen Anaplasma marginale. The approach to a radiation vaccine was successfully presented at the Congress of Parasitology in Mexico and at the Third International Meeting on Radiation Processing in Tokyo (Japan).

From 1981, Victoria Guasti diversified her field of work, collaborating with institutions inside and outside UNAM, such as the Institute of Materials Research and the Salvador Zubirán National Institute of Health Sciences and Nutrition, which lasted until her retirement in 1987. Given her experience in radiation, she collaborated in projects such as “Studies of the properties of polymers cross-linked by gamma radiation for use as coatings in pipes for geothermal use” and “Determination of the biological half-life of tritiated water in hyperthyroid patients.”

She maintained an intense collaboration with the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Zootechnics, UNAM and with the National Institute of Nuclear Research, working mainly on sterilization processes of immune serums to be used in animal production. These academic interactions produced presentations at international conferences and publications in the best journals in the area.

In 1983 she went on an internship to Lima, Peru, where she presented her work in various forums and gave a regional training course on food irradiation for developing countries in Latin America. This experience allowed her to identify problems in scientific development in Latin American countries.

Other interests
Between 1983 and 1984, Victoria Guasti collaborated in the program to facilitate the stay of Visiting Researchers in the Division of Graduate Studies of the University Center for Visiting Professors. Subsequently, from 1985 to 1986, she worked at the University Center for Science Communication organizing and giving lectures. She also cooperated in the development of the “Great Masters” program, gathering information from the scientific pioneers of Mexico, visiting and interviewing UNAM professors.

Between 1986 and 1987, she did a sabbatical stay at the General Directorate of Academic Exchange in the Special Program of the Subdirectorate of Information and Systems. During this period, she developed the format for the collection and review of data from the scientific and humanistic units of the UNAM, analyzed the material of the different media of the General Directorate of Academic Exchange, and made a diagnosis of the four modules that comprise the ARIES system.

After her retirement, Victoria Guasti resumed her interest in art, culture, and the human condition. She regularly took courses in various subjects at the Center for Studies for Foreigners of the UNAM, the Faculties of Psychology and Philosophy and Letters of the UNAM, Chopo, the UAM Xochimilco, among others.

From the early 1960s she became interested in gardening, which led to the presidency of the Pedregal de San Ángel Garden Club.

On the other hand, her interest in other ways of life, religion, and social structure led her to explore Freemasonry.