Miguelina Guirao (1925-2026)

Today we bid farewell to Dr. Miguelina Guirao (1925–2026), Senior Researcher at CONICET and one of the most influential scientists in the development of psychophysics and the sciences of perception in Argentina.

Her legacy extends far beyond her extraordinary scientific contributions. She was a pioneer in introducing psychophysical techniques to our country, promoted interdisciplinary research on sensory processes and speech perception, and founded the Laboratory for Sensory Research (LIS) in 1968 at the initiative of Dr. Bernardo Houssay. Under her leadership, the LIS became a leading center in Latin America, earning her the International Society for Psychophysics Award in 1992.

Educated at the University of Buenos Aires, awarded her doctorate at the Catholic University of Milan, and shaped by a pivotal period at Harvard University alongside S. S. Stevens, Miguelina brought together engineers, biologists, linguists, psychologists, biochemists, and other specialists at the LIS, convinced that science advances when different perspectives come together.

Her contributions encompassed sensory perception, acoustic phonetics, verbal communication, and the statistical study of Argentine Spanish. Her book The Senses: Foundations of Perception continues to be a landmark reference for generations of students and researchers.

Those of us who had the privilege of knowing her will remember not only her intellectual brilliance but also her exceptional humanity. She was a mentor who inspired by example, trained generations of scientists, fostered scientific excellence, and conveyed an unwavering passion for knowledge.

Her legacy will live on through her publications, the LIS, and, above all, in the people she mentored.

Thank you, Miguelina, for paving the way for Argentine science.

A more personal note:

“In 1974, when I was deciding how to apply electronic engineering to medicine, I went to the Hospital de Clínicas, where LIS was based. After collaborating there during the last four months of my degree, in the area of experimental phonetics, carrying out vowel synthesis (AI was just beginning), I met with Miguelina. That meeting was decisive in my career. Without preamble, she asked me, ‘How do you think the brain processes the information it receives from the outside world?’ ‘In a non-linear way,’ I replied. She corrected me and pointed out that in 99% of cases that was true, but that there are some stimuli, such as short distances, that are evaluated linearly. Surprised, I asked her what contributions electronic engineers had made to research in the field of biology. Guirao, who taught by example, went to her library and, one by one, showed me the contributions of numerous engineers. She introduced me to psychoacoustic techniques while we worked on determining the loudness functions of complex tones, noise, and speech. Later, she encouraged me to work on verbal communication at MIT with Kenneth Stevens, creator of the quantum theory of speech, and to continue synthesizing voices with Dennis Klatt. That is where another story began.”

Text: Jorge A. Gurlekian