Nov 07, 2022

Celebrating Irene Bernasconi

This Doodle’s Key Themes

For Irene Bernasconi, the world was her oyster—or perhaps she’d say starfish. Today’s Doodle celebrates Argentina’s first echinoderm specialist, who spent more than 50 years studying sea stars and other marine creatures. On this day in 1968, she became the first Argentine woman to lead a marine biology expedition in Antarctica.

Bernasconi was born in La Plata, Argentina on September 29, 1896. She became a teacher in 1918, specializing in natural studies, and began working at the Argentine Museum of Natural Sciences in the early 1920’s. She published her first scientific work about molluscs and marine invertebrates in 1925.

At age 72, Bernasconi became the first Argentine woman to lead an Arctic expedition. She and three other female scientists set out to Antarctica to explore the continent’s biodiversity near the South Pole.

Throughout the expedition, Bernasconi and her team collected more than 2,000 echinoderm specimens, as well as plant life and other living samples, in Antarctica’s ecosystem. To achieve this, they used diving equipment to set up nets and hooks in extremely cold waters. The trip’s most notable discovery was a new echinoderm family in the Arctic region.

In 1969, the Embassy of Women in America awarded the team with a commemorative medal. On International Women’s Day in 2018, which also happened to be the 50th anniversary of the polar expedition, the National Directorate for Antarctica, the Argentine Antarctic Institute and the Naval Hydrographic Service also recognized Bernasconi and her team for their achievements. Her name was incorporated into Argentine maps of Antarctica with the establishment of Bernasconi Cove.

Check out the behind-the-scenes process for

today’s Doodle artwork by Doodler, Alyssa Winans