Blas Lázaro Ibiza
(Madrid, 1858 - 1921)

Blas Lázaro Ibiza studied pharmacy and sciences at the Universidad Central. He worked as assistant professor at the Institución Libre de Enseñanza between 1880-1885. From December 1882, he combined this job with a teaching position at the Escuela Normal de Maestras.
He became extremely active in the reform of this school for training women teachers, a process initiated by the Count of Romanones in the summer of 1901.

He also studied at the Royal Botanical Gardens in the spring of 1882.  In December 1890, he became assistant professor of Descriptive Botany, in the Faculty of Pharmacy at the Universidad Central. He obtained a full-time professorship in November 1892 and taught there until his death.

Lázaro’s work in his department was remarkable. He created a research laboratory and obtained a complete new set of teaching materials, most of them from Germany. These improvements were mainly the result of his mission, sponsored by the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios (JAE) to conduct a comparative study of the main European laboratories of cryptogamia in Austria, Germany, Holland, and Belgium, in 1908. During his visit, he established a network of international contacts.

The Ministry of Education, under a proposal from the JAE, commissioned Lázaro to participate in the Third International Botanical Congress, held in Brussels in the spring of 1910. After his visit, which allowed him to learn more about the organization of some European scientific gardens, he was directly involved in the remodeling of the Royal Botanic Gardens undertaken by the JAE. In July 1910, he was appointed director of the new section of special crops, which included aquatic and alpine plants, though his work in this area had only limited success.