Radó Trilla, Núria

Revistes Catalanes amb Accés Obert

Margalida Comas Camps (1892–1972), 
a woman for all seasons
 
Núria Radó-Trilla
Barcelona Knowledge Hub, Academia Europaea, Barcelona 
In Spain, women did not have the right to enter research institutes and universities until 
1910 [16]. At best, they could attend a Teacher Training College (Escuela Normal, in 
Spain), a kind of junior college devoted to train high school graduates to be teachers. 
However, it was unimaginable a woman could become, for example, a physician, a law-
yer or a scien tist. It would still be more than twenty years before women’s suffrage ar-
rived. With the Second Republic, in 1934, Spain was one of the last European countries 
to adopt it. However, very soon a bloody and cruel Civil War (in 1936–1939) would trun-
cate projects and dreams of a whole generation of young Spanish people.
In this scenario, Margalida Comas Camps (Fig. 1) went on to become the first Spanish 
woman to be awarded a research-based doctorate in the natural sciences [18]. It was 
not without obstacles and impediments, which made it more like a steeplechase than a 
scientific career. 
Margalida Comas was born in 1892 in Alaior, a small village on the island of Minorca, 
in the Balearic Islands. She was extremely influenced by her father Gabriel Comas 
(1864–1942), a liberal vocational teacher and educator who started a free night school 
for adults and who transmitted to his children that education was the key to achieving 
the development of society [19]. In time, she became “the most important Spanish fe-
male scientist of the first third of the twentieth century, and one of the most important 
educators of the first half of the twentieth century” [14]. Indeed, her mother Rita 
Camps, also contributed to Margalida’s vocation. But let us start from the beginning. 
Powerfully drawn to science, Comas obtained excellent grades in high school and 
she won the High School Special Award of the Science Section with a project entitled 
“Flowers and insects: reciprocal adaptations to cooperate in pollination”. In September 
1911, once she finished high school, she asked for permission to take the exam of the 
subjects she needed to complete and obtain the degree of elementary, middle and high 
school teacher. She asked to take the exams directly because doing so she would skip 
going to the Teacher Training College, as it was customary at that time. So, at the end of 
1911 (she was only 19) Comas became a teacher, with excellent grades. 
O P E N A A C C E S S
HISTORICAL CORNER
 Institut d’Estudis Catalans, Barcelona, Catalonia 
www.cat-science.cat
CONTRIBUTIONS to SCIENCE 10:107-110 (2014)ISSN (print): 1575-6343  e-ISSN: 2013-410X
Correspondence: 
Núria Radó-Trilla
Barcelona Knowledge Hub
Academia Europaea
Carme, 47 (IEC building)
08001 Barcelona, Catalonia
Tel. +34-932701727
E-mail: nrado@acadeuro.org
Keywords: Margalida Comas (1892–1972) · natural sciences · Second Spanish Republic · women in science
CONTRIB SCI 10:107-110 (2014)
doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.195
108
Margalida Comas Camps (1892–1972)
CONTRIBUTIONS to SCIENCE 10:107-110 (2014) www.cat-science.cat
As it can be found in the detailed biography edited by 
María Ángeles Delgado and published in 2009 by the 
Government of the Balearic Islands [14], Comas cultivated 
her pedagogical facet and scientific experimentation in paral-
lel in order to offer to future teachers an appropriate scien-
tific and academic training. She also wanted teachers to have 
an interest in modern scientific methods. Throughout her 
life, Comas never distinguished science pedagogy from scien-
tific knowledge. To her, the ideal of scientific training con-
sisted of “placing students in the same position as the re-
searcher, not because they should discover by themselves 
what had taken centuries to be discovered, but because they 
should look through researchers’ eyes and handle their sci-
entific instruments in order to acquire the qualities of obser-
vation and reasoning typical of scientists and to apply them 
to other aspects of their life” [3].
She was convinced that science education could not be 
separated from usual scientific practice. She argued that the 
main objective of science education (“to train students in the 
observation, reasoning, inventiveness and ingenuity, and to 
prepare them to train their students this way” [15]) could not 
just be learned in books but also in the lab. This is why, once 
she became a tenured teacher of physics, chemistry and natu-
ral history at the Teacher Training College in Santander (Canta-
bria, Spain), she continued her scientific formal education. 
In 1918 Comas began her studies at the Faculty of 
Sciences of the University of Barcelona as an unofficial stu-
dent. Her great interest in research then led her to continue 
her studies in laboratories in Paris and London, while she was 
also working as a teacher at the Bedford College for women, 
at King’s College, and at Sir John Cass Institute.
In 1921, when she returned to Spain, she completed her 
degree and wrote her first scientific work, entitled “Sobre la 
estructura microscópica del corazón de los cefalópodos” 
(“On the microscopic structure of the cephalopods’ heart”), 
that was published in the 24th Newsletter of the Royal 
Spanish Society of Natural History [4]. 
Some years later, she took the exams for her doctoral 
courses and started her doctoral thesis at the Sorbonne in 
Paris. In 1926, she started working in the Laboratoire 
d’evolution de êtres organisés, under the direction of Prof. 
Caullery. There she studied the extremely topical (at that 
point) concept of biological inheritance. Specifically, she 
studied the relationship between sex and temperature in the 
frog Rana temporaria. She also worked on the study of chro-
mosomes in the mosquito Chironomus, getting to design an 
innovative way to get generations of Chironomus in captivity, 
which would mark her scientific career. During the period she 
spent in Paris, Comas published five notes on her research in 
scientific journals in French. First, “Sur le mode de penetration 
de Paramermis contorta dans la larve de Chironomus thummi 
Kieff” [5] and “Sur l’origine des pigments des larves de 
Chironomus” [6], which were published in the Comptes Rendus 
de la Société de Biologie. Those pigments are haemoglobine, 
because the larvae of Chironomus need to catch the low con-
centrations of oxygen present in the anoxic mud where they 
live. She also published “Notes biologiques sur Chironomus 
thummi Kieff” [7] and “Sur les métamorphoses de Prodiamesa 
Notata Meigen (Chironomidae)” [8] in the Bulletin de la Société 
Zoologique de France. Finally, her article “Sur l’intersexualité 
chez Paramermis contorta V. Linzt” was published in the 
Bulletin biologique de la France et de la Belgique [9].
Despite her fruitful research, she wanted to return once 
again to the Teacher Training College in Tarragona. However, 
Prof. Caullery offered her the possibility to go back to Paris 
during the academic year 1927-1928 to go into depth with 
her research. During that period she focused on the study of 
chromosomes of Paramermis contorta, the origin of the in-
tersexuality of such species and the inheritance of the lack of 
pigment in certain Chironomus. She made the most of that 
stay writing her doctoral thesis, entitled “Contribución al 
conocimiento de la biología de Chironomus y de su parásito 
Paramermis contorta” (“Contribution to the understanding 
Fig. 1. Margalida Comas in Alcaufar (Minorca), in the 1920s.
C
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109
Radó-Trilla
CONTRIBUTIONS to SCIENCE 10:107-110 (2014) www.cat-science.cat
of Chironomus thummi biology and of its parasite Paramer­
mis contorta”) (Fig. 2). Her thesis defense, in January 1928 at 
the Central University of Madrid, obtained an excellent 
grade. For this reason, the work was published in the Memo­
rias de la Real Sociedad Española de Historia Natural [10]. 
And this is how Comas became the first Spanish woman to be 
awarded a research-based doctorate in the natural sciences. 
Scientists are said to always remain scientists. And Comas 
continued to be a very productive researcher after her doc-
toral studies, publishing several papers every year. For exam-
ple, she published, along with her thesis supervisor Prof. 
Caullery, “Le determinisme du sexe chez un nematode para-
site des larves de Chironomes” [2]. She also published “Sobre 
la influencia de la tiroidina en el desarrollo de Chironomus 
thummi Kieff” (“On the influence of tiroidine on the develop-
ment of Chironomus thummi Kieff”) [11] in the Boletín de la 
Real Sociedad Española de Historia Natural, and another 
work about sex determinism in Paramermis contorta v. Linzt 
[12] in the Memorias de la Real Sociedad Española de Historia 
Natural.
So, as it was pointed out in the report on her doctoral 
thesis, Comas showed a “remarkable aptitude for scientific 
research” [14]. Unfortunately, it was not easy to be a female 
scientist: such skills were not encouraged in Spain, Europe or 
America, while her male colleagues had better chances to go 
on with their careers.
In 1929, having exhausted Comas all possibilities to carry 
on with scientific research, she returned to the Teachers 
Training College in Tarragona and focused on her educational 
task. She revitalized educational methods; she tried to 
achieve a better-educated society, more cultured, fairer, freer 
and more egalitarian. She fought for equality between women 
and men, and one of her key aims was to modernize the 
Spanish society of that time. So, as many Spaniards did in 
that time, Comas committed to the Republic’s ideals. 
In 1931, when the Second Spanish Republic was pro-
claimed, Comas was appointed Director of the Teachers 
Training College of the Autonomous Government of Catalonia 
(Generalitat de Catalunya) [14]. Also that year, on March 26, 
she married photographer Guillem Bestard, an old friend, 
widower and with a son. Three years later, she became Asso-
ciate Professor of elementary biology and natural science 
methodology at the University of Barcelona (Fig. 3).
In July 1936, the Spanish Civil War began. As discussed by 
Barona [1], the military uprising in Spain in 1936 was a fatal 
blow to the nascent scientific community in Spain, and Comas 
C
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Fig. 2. First page of Margalida Comas’ doctoral thesis (Madrid, 1928).
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Fig. 3. Margalida Comas and 14-months-old Miquel Sintes Comas (one of her 
nephews) in Barcelona in 1933.
110
Margalida Comas Camps (1892–1972)
CONTRIBUTIONS to SCIENCE 10:107-110 (2014) www.cat-science.cat
was one the many promising scientists who suffered the con-
sequences of the war. Committed to republicanism, in 1937 
Comas was appointed by the Ministry of Public Instruction of 
the Spanish Republic to collaborate with and advise the 
National Joint Committee and local Committees regarding 
the education and instruction of the Basque children taken to 
England to protect them from the war. According to C. Ryan 
in this journal [18], on May 27, 1937, the ship La Habana 
sailed for Southampton carrying four thousand Basque chil-
dren. During her years in England, Comas worked for the 
Republican cause and the welfare of these child refugees 
[17]. This new occupation was time consuming; she became 
engaged in full-time teaching and acting as parent for the 
Basque children who lived in the school. In April 1939, the 
cruel Spanish Civil War ended with the victory of the fascists. 
Thus, Comas, as happened with hundreds of thousand other 
democratic Spaniards, remained in exile until the end of her 
life (Fig. 4).
Since 1942 until her retirement (in 1959), Comas taught in 
the innovative Dartington Hall School, in Totnes (Devon County, 
UK). The first time she could go back to Majorca for some days 
was in 1955, 19 years after she left the island. Once she retired, 
she and her husband lived out of a suitcase between Totnes 
and Majorca. She died in Exmouth due to an acute pneumonia 
in August 28, 1972, three years after her husband.
It is obvious that Comas was forced into exile at a crucial 
stage in her career and that this changed her life forever. 
However, her many years of work as a teacher also reflected 
the difficulty for women at that time to take up careers in 
scientific research [13]. Perhaps in response to this challenge, 
she tried to combine both fields by introducing her students 
to scientific field. Who knows what the future would have 
brought her and what research Margalida Comas would have 
done if she could find much better circumstances in her pro-
fessional life.
References
1.  Barona JL (ed) (2010) El exilio científico republicano. Publicaciones 
Universitat de València, Valencia
2.  Caullery M, Comas M (1928) Le determinisme du sexe chez un nemato-
de parasite des larves de Chironomes. Comptes Rendus hebdomadaires 
de séances de l’Academie de Sciences 186:646-648
3.  Comas M (1922) La enseñanza elemental de las ciencias en Inglaterra. 
Boletín de la Institución Libre de Enseñanza 744:80-83
4.  Comas M (1924) Sobre la estructura microscópica del corazón de los 
Cefalópodos. Boletín de la Real Sociedad Española de Historia Natural 
24:313-320
5.  Comas M (1927) Sur le mode de penetration de Paramermis contorta 
dans la larve de Chironomus thummi Kieff. Comptes Rendus de la Société 
de Biologie 96:673-675
6.  Comas M (1927) Sur l’origine des pigments des larves de Chironomus. 
Comptes Rendus de la Société de Biologie 96:866-868
7.  Comas M (1927) Notes biologiques sur Chironomus thummi Kieff. 
Bulletin de la Société Zoologique de France 3:127-133
8.  Comas M (1927) Sur les métamorphoses de Prodiamesa Notata Meigen 
(Chironomidae). Bulletin de la Société Zoologique de France 52:174-178
9.  Comas M (1927) Sur l’intersexualité chez Paramermis contorta V Linzt. 
Bulletin Biologique de la France et de la Belgique 61:186-189
10.  Comas M (1928) Contribución al conocimiento de la biología de 
Chironomus y de su parásito Paramermis contorta. Memorias de la Real 
Sociedad Española de Historia Natural 13:369-427
11.  Comas M (1928) Sobre la influencia de la tiroidina en el desarrollo de 
Chironomus thummi Kieff. Boletín de la Real Sociedad Española de 
Historia Natural 27:309-314
12.  Comas M (1929) Contribución al conocimiento del determinismo del 
sexo en Paramermis contorta v. Linzt. Memorias de la Real Sociedad 
Española de Historia Natural 15:47-52
13.  Delgado Echeverría I (2007) El descubrimiento de los cromosomas sexu-
ales. CSIC, Madrid
14.  Delgado Martínez MA (ed) (2009) Margalida Comas Camps (1892-1972): 
científica i pedagoga. Govern de les Illes Balears, Palma de Mallorca
15.  Junta de Ampliación de Estudios (JAE), Madrid. Archive (1920) 
Expediente personal de Margarita Comas Camps. Manuscript docu-
ment.
16. Margallón Portolés C (1998) Pioneras españolas en las ciencias. CSIC, 
Madrid, 406 pp
17.  Ryan C (2009) Margarita Comas Camps: The English connection. In: 
Delgado Martínez MA (ed) (2009) Margalida Comas Camps (1892–
1972): científica i pedagoga. Govern de les Illes Balears, Palma de 
Mallorca, pp 11-21
18.  Ryan C (2011) Margalida Comas Camps (1892–1972): Scientist and sci-
ence educator. Contrib Sci 7:77-84
19.  Sureda Garcia B (2009) Conèixer i ensenyar: la nissaga del Comes. In: 
Delgado Martínez MA (ed) (2009) Margalida Comas Camps (1892-1972): 
científica i pedagoga. Govern de les Illes Balears, Palma de Mallorca, 
pp 31-37
Fig. 4. Margalida Comas in the 1920s.
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Margalida Comas Camps (1892-1972), a woman for all seasons

Radó-Trilla, Núria

Hemeroteca Cientifica Catalana

Margalida Comas Camps (1892–1972), a woman for all seasons Núria Radó-TrillaBarcelona Knowledge Hub, Academia Europaea, Barcelona In Spain, women did not have the right to enter research ins  tutes and universi  es un  l 1910. At best, they could a  end a Teacher Training College (Escuela Normal, in Spain), a kind of junior college devoted to train high school graduates to be teachers. However, it was unimaginable a woman could become, for example, a physician, a lawyer or a scien- st. It would s  ll be more than twenty years before women’s suff rage arrived. With the Second Republic, in 1934, Spain was one of the last European countries to adopt it. However, very soon a bloody and cruel Civil War (in 1936–1939) would truncate projects and dreams of a whole genera  on of young Spanish people.In this scenario, Margalida Comas Camps (Fig. 1) went on to become the fi rst Spanish woman to be awarded a research-based doctorate in the natural sciences [17]. It was not without obstacles and impediments, which made it more like a steeplechase than a scien  fi c career. Margalida Comas was born in 1892 in Alaior, a small village on the island of Minorca, in the Balearic Islands. She was extremely infl uenced by her father Gabriel Comas (1864–1942), a liberal voca  onal teacher and educator who started a free night school for adults and who transmi  ed to his children that educa  on was the key to achieving the development of society [18]. In  me, she became “the most important Spanish fe-male scien  st of the fi rst third of the twen  eth century, and one of the most important educators of the fi rst half of the twen  eth century” [14]. Indeed, her mother Rita Camps, also contributed to Margalida’s voca  on. But let us start from the beginning. Powerfully drawn to science, Comas obtained excellent grades in high school and she won the High School Special Award of the Science Sec  on with a project en  tled “Flowers and insects: reciprocal adapta  ons to cooperate in pollina  on”. In September 1911, once she fi nished high school, she asked for permission to take the exam of the subjects she needed to complete and obtain the degree of elementary, middle and high school teacher. She asked to take the exams directly because doing so she would skip going to the Teacher Training College, as it was customary at that  me. So, at the end of 1911 (she was only 19) Comas became a teacher, with excellent grades. O P E N A A C C E S SHISTORICAL CORNER Institut d’Estudis Catalans, Barcelona, Catalonia www.cat-science.catCONTRIBUTIONS to SCIENCE 10 (2014) 107-110doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.195   ISSN (print): 1575-6343  e-ISSN: 2013-410XCorrespondence: Núria Radó-TrillaBarcelona Knowledge HubAcademia EuropaeaCarme, 47 (IEC building)08001 Barcelona, CataloniaTel. +34-932701727E-mail: nrado@acadeuro.orgKeywords: Margalida Comas (1892–1972) · natural sciences · Second Spanish Republic · women in science108Margalida Comas Camps (1892–1972)CONTRIBUTIONS to SCIENCE 10 (2014) 107-110www.cat-science.catAs it can be found in the detailed biography edited by María Ángeles Delgado and published in 2009 by the Government of the Balearic Islands [14], Comas cul  vated her pedagogical facet and scien  fi c experimenta  on in paral-lel in order to off er to future teachers an appropriate scien- fi c and academic training. She also wanted teachers to have an interest in modern scien  fi c methods. Throughout her life, Comas never dis  nguished science pedagogy from scien- fi c knowledge. To her, the ideal of scien  fi c training con-sisted of “placing students in the same posi  on as the re-searcher, not because they should discover by themselves what had taken centuries to be discovered, but because they should look through researchers’ eyes and handle their sci-en  fi c instruments in order to acquire the quali  es of obser-va  on and reasoning typical of scien  sts and to apply them to other aspects of their life” [3].She was convinced that science educa  on could not be separated from usual scien  fi c prac  ce. She argued that the main objec  ve of science educa  on (“to train students in the observa  on, reasoning, inven  veness and ingenuity, and to prepare them to train their students this way” [15]) could not just be learned in books but also in the lab. This is why, once she became a tenured teacher of physics, chemistry and natu-ral history at the Teacher Training College in Santander (Canta-bria, Spain), she con  nued her scien  fi c formal educa  on. In 1918 Comas began her studies at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Barcelona as an unoffi  cial stu-dent. Her great interest in research then led her to con  nue her studies in laboratories in Paris and London, while she was also working as a teacher at the Bedford College for women, at King’s College, and at Sir John Cass Ins  tute.In 1921, when she returned to Spain, she completed her degree and wrote her fi rst scien  fi c work, en  tled “Sobre la estructura microscópica del corazón de los cefalópodos” (“On the microscopic structure of the cephalopods’ heart”), that was published in the 24th Newsle  er of the Royal Spanish Society of Natural History [4]. Some years later, she took the exams for her doctoral courses and started her doctoral thesis at the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1926, she started working in the Laboratoire d’evolu  on de êtres organisés, under the direc  on of Prof. Caullery. There she studied the extremely topical (at that point) concept of biological inheritance. Specifi cally, she studied the rela  onship between sex and temperature in the frog Rana temporaria. She also worked on the study of chro-mosomes in the mosquito Chironomus, ge   ng to design an innova  ve way to get genera  ons of Chironomus in cap  vity, which would mark her scien  fi c career. During the period she spent in Paris, Comas published fi ve notes on her research in scien  fi c journals in French. First, “Sur le mode de penetra  on de Paramermis contorta dans la larve de Chironomus thummi Kieff ” [5] and “Sur l’origine des pigments des larves de Chironomus” [6], which were published in the Comptes Rendus de la Société de Biologie. Those pigments are haemoglobine, because the larvae of Chironomus need to catch the low con-centra  ons of oxygen present in the anoxic mud where they live. She also published “Notes biologiques sur Chironomus thummi Kieff ” [7] and “Sur les métamorphoses de Prodiamesa Notata Meigen (Chironomidae)” [8] in the Bulle  n de la Société Zoologique de France. Finally, her ar  cle “Sur l’intersexualité chez Paramermis contorta V. Linzt” was published in the Bulle  n biologique de la France et de la Belgique [9].Despite her frui  ul research, she wanted to return once again to the Teacher Training College in Tarragona. However, Prof. Caullery off ered her the possibility to go back to Paris during the academic year 1927-1928 to go into depth with her research. During that period she focused on the study of chromosomes of Paramermis contorta, the origin of the in-tersexuality of such species and the inheritance of the lack of pigment in certain Chironomus. She made the most of that stay wri  ng her doctoral thesis, en  tled “Contribución al conocimiento de la biología de Chironomus y de su parásito Paramermis contorta” (“Contribu  on to the understanding Fig. 1. Margalida Comas in Alcaufar (Minorca), in the 1920s.Contrib Sci109Radó-TrillaCONTRIBUTIONS to SCIENCE 10 (2014) 107-110www.cat-science.catof Chironomus thummi biology and of its parasite Paramer-mis contorta”) (Fig. 2). Her thesis defense, in January 1928 at the Central University of Madrid, obtained an excellent grade. For this reason, the work was published in the Memo-rias de la Real Sociedad Española de Historia Natural [10]. And this is how Comas became the fi rst Spanish woman to be awarded a research-based doctorate in the natural sciences. Scien  sts are said to always remain scien  sts. And Comas con  nued to be a very produc  ve researcher a  er her doc-toral studies, publishing several papers every year. For exam-ple, she published, along with her thesis supervisor Prof. Caullery, “Le determinisme du sexe chez un nematode para-site des larves de Chironomes” [2]. She also published “Sobre la infl uencia de la  roidina en el desarrollo de Chironomus thummi Kieff ” (“On the infl uence of  roidine on the develop-ment of Chironomus thummi Kieff ”) [11] in the Bole  n de la Real Sociedad Española de Historia Natural, and another work about sex determinism in Paramermis contorta v. Linzt [12] in the Memorias de la Real Sociedad Española de Historia Natural.So, as it was pointed out in the report on her doctoral thesis, Comas showed a “remarkable ap  tude for scien  fi c research” [14]. Unfortunately, it was not easy to be a female scien  st: such skills were not encouraged in Spain, Europe or America, while her male colleagues had be  er chances to go on with their careers.In 1929, having exhausted Comas all possibili  es to carry on with scien  fi c research, she returned to the Teachers Training College in Tarragona and focused on her educa  onal task. She revitalized educa  onal methods; she tried to achieve a be  er-educated society, more cultured, fairer, freer and more egalitarian. She fought for equality between women and men, and one of her key aims was to modernize the Spanish society of that  me. So, as many Spaniards did in that  me, Comas commi  ed to the Republic’s ideals. In 1931, when the Second Spanish Republic was pro-claimed, Comas was appointed Director of the Teachers Training College of the Autonomous Government of Catalonia (Generalitat de Catalunya) [14]. Also that year, on March 26, she married photographer Guillem Bestard, an old friend, widower and with a son. Three years later, she became Asso-ciate Professor of elementary biology and natural science methodology at the University of Barcelona (Fig. 3).In July 1936, the Spanish Civil War began. As discussed by Barona [1], the military uprising in Spain in 1936 was a fatal blow to the nascent scien  fi c community in Spain, and Comas Contrib SciFig. 2. First page of Margalida Comas’ doctoral thesis.Contrib SciFig. 3. Margalida Comas and 14-months-old Miquel Sintes Comas (one of her nephews) in Barcelona in 1933.110Margalida Comas Camps (1892–1972)CONTRIBUTIONS to SCIENCE 10 (2014) 107-110www.cat-science.catwas one the many promising scien  sts who suff ered the con-sequences of the war. Commi  ed to republicanism, in 1937 Comas was appointed by the Ministry of Public Instruc  on of the Spanish Republic to collaborate with and advise the Na  onal Joint Commi  ee and local Commi  ees regarding the educa  on and instruc  on of the Basque children taken to England to protect them from the war. According to C. Ryan in this journal [17], on May 27, 1937, the ship La Habana sailed for Southampton carrying four thousand Basque chil-dren. During her years in England, Comas worked for the Republican cause and the welfare of these child refugees [16]. This new occupa  on was  me consuming; she became engaged in full-  me teaching and ac  ng as parent for the Basque children who lived in the school. In April 1939, the cruel Spanish Civil War ended with the victory of the fascists. Thus, Comas, as happened with hundreds of thousand other democra  c Spaniards, remained in exile un  l the end of her life (Fig. 4).Since 1942 un  l her re  rement (in 1959), Comas taught in the innova  ve Dar  ngton Hall School, in Totnes (Devon County, UK). The fi rst  me she could go back to Majorca for some days was in 1955, 19 years a  er she le   the island. Once she re  red, she and her husband lived out of a suitcase between Totnes and Majorca. She died in Exmouth due to an acute pneumonia in August 28, 1972, three years a  er her husband.It is obvious that Comas was forced into exile at a crucial stage in her career and that this changed her life forever. However, her many years of work as a teacher also refl ected the diffi  culty for women at that  me to take up careers in scien  fi c research [13]. Perhaps in response to this challenge, she tried to combine both fi elds by introducing her students to scien  fi c fi eld. Who knows what the future would have brought her and what science would have achieved if Margalida Comas Camps could have become the scien  st she probably wanted to be.References1.  Barona JL (ed) (2010) El exilio cien  fi co republicano. Publicaciones Universitat de València, Valencia2.  Caullery M, Comas M (1928) Le determinisme du sexe chez un nemato-de parasite des larves de Chironomes. Comptes Rendus hebdomadaires de séances de l’Academie de Sciences 186:646-6483.  Comas M (1922) La enseñanza elemental de las ciencias en Inglaterra. Bole  n de la Ins  tución Libre de Enseñanza 744:80-834.  Comas M (1924) Sobre la estructura microscópica del corazón de los Cefalópodos. Bole  n de la Real Sociedad Española de Historia Natural 24:313-3205.  Comas M (1927) Sur le mode de penetra  on de Paramermis contorta dans la larve de Chironomus thummi Kieff . Comptes Rendus de la Société de Biologie 96:673-6756.  Comas M (1927) Sur l’origine des pigments des larves de Chironomus. Comptes Rendus de la Société de Biologie 96:866-8687.  Comas M (1927) Notes biologiques sur Chironomus thummi Kieff . Bulle  n de la Société Zoologique de France 3:127-1338.  Comas M (1927) Sur les métamorphoses de Prodiamesa Notata Meigen (Chironomidae). Bulle  n de la Société Zoologique de France 52:174-1789.  Comas M (1927) Sur l’intersexualité chez Paramermis contorta V Linzt. Bulle  n Biologique de la France et de la Belgique 61:186-18910.  Comas M (1928) Contribución al conocimiento de la biología de Chironomus y de su parásito Paramermis contorta. Memorias de la Real Sociedad Española de Historia Natural 13:369-42711.  Comas M (1928) Sobre la infl uencia de la  roidina en el desarrollo de Chironomus thummi Kieff . Bole  n de la Real Sociedad Española de Historia Natural 27:309-31412.  Comas M (1929) Contribución al conocimiento del determinismo del sexo en Paramermis contorta v. Linzt. Memorias de la Real Sociedad Española de Historia Natural 15:47-5213.  Delgado Echeverría I (2007) El descubrimiento de los cromosomas sexu-ales. CSIC, Madrid14.  Delgado Mar  nez MA (ed) (2009) Margalida Comas Camps (1892-1972): cien  fi ca i pedagoga. Govern de les Illes Balears, Palma de Mallorca15.  Junta de Ampliación de Estudios (JAE), Madrid. Archive (1920) Expediente personal de Margarita Comas Camps. Manuscript docu-ment.16.  Ryan C (2009) Margarita Comas Camps: The English connec  on. In: Delgado Mar  nez MA (ed) (2009) Margalida Comas Camps (1892–1972): cien  fi ca i pedagoga. Govern de les Illes Balears, Palma de Mallorca, pp 11-2117.  Ryan C (2011) Margalida Comas Camps (1892–1972): Scien  st and sci-ence educator. Contrib Sci 7:77-8418.  Sureda Garcia B (2009) Conèixer i ensenyar: la nissaga del Comes. In: Delgado Mar  nez MA (ed) (2009) Margalida Comas Camps (1892-1972): cien  fi ca i pedagoga. Govern de les Illes Balears, Palma de Mallorca, pp 31-37Fig. 4. Margalida Comas in the 1920s.Contrib Sci

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