María Aránzazu Vigón was the daughter of General Vigón, a Catholic monarchist who participated in the education of the children of Alfonso XIII and who promoted scientific research, being president of the Nuclear Energy Board and of the National Institute of Aeronautical Technology. She was a woman of deep Catholic convictions, received as a child in her family environment, and worked with women like Piedad de la Cierva, of Opus Dei, or with her sister María Teresa, who would leave her scientific career to become a nun. She had to do with the development of nuclear energy in Spain, with the Optics Institute of the CSIC and the Laboratory and Research Workshop of the General Staff of the Navy, and with the military scientist and also a practicing Catholic José María Otero Navascués.
She had eight siblings, all of them - also the three sisters - with university studies. María Aránzazu and María Teresa studied science, the other studied philosophy. José Mª Otero Navascués, selected her to participate in the work of the Nuclear Energy Board. She received high-level academic training in European and North American centers on nuclear technology, together with a group of Spanish physicists.
In 1948 he received a grant from the Spanish government to travel to Rome to the Institute of Nuclear Physics, where he studied Geiger counters, which according to José María Otero Navascués had to learn to build in Spain to work in nuclear physics, and to Milan to the Centro di Informazioni Studi ed Esperienze. In 1949 he taught, together with Carlos Sánchez del Río, the first course on nuclear physics in Spain. He received his doctorate at the Max Planck Institute of Physics under the direction of Karl Wirtz at the beginning of the 1950's. He later studied at the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Chicago. She also obtained research funding from international entities; specifically, the International Atomic Energy Agency approved in 1961 a project directed by her entitled 'Studies on the properties of moderating and multiplying media by means of the pulsed neutron technique'.
Spanish National Research Council (CSIC).
