Nicaraguan born scientist Miguel Ramírez Goyena was an outstanding teacher in many scientific fields, creating institutions and elemental texts he was respected for his work not only in his home country but also in Costa Rica and Honduras. A native of León, he quickly became a member of his country's intellectual community, displaying a keen interest in many fields, and was named director of the Instituto Nacional Central in Managua at just 22 years old. Here he taught botany, physics, mathematics and chemistry for over forty years and throughout his life remained passionate about scientific education. Goyena married Felipa Zavala and during the seven brief years before she died in 1889 they had five children.

After a tragic event in Granada in 1891, when many civilians were killed by police stepping in to suppress an anti-governmental protest, Goyena resigned from his post, saying he could no longer work for such a government. He left the country for Costa Rica and later Honduras where he founded physics and chemistry institutions and an astronomical observatory while continuing to lecture on a broad spectrum of subjects.

In Honduras he remarried to a local girl named Celia Sánchez before returning to Nicaragua and León in 1902. The following year Goyena produced his most famous work, the first edition of his Flora Nicaragüense, and having returned to a more favourable government, he dedicated it to the president at the time, José S. Zelaya. A huge undertaking, the publication was the culmination of years spent travelling the length and breadth of Nicaragua, perched atop a mule collecting specimens and exploring the country's vegetation. He identified and researched the specimens he had gathered at the aforementioned institute in Managua, which, since 1927, has borne his name. The flora was later republished in greater detail in two volumes (1909 and 1911) and as with all of his life's work the Flora Nicaragüense was written to create "something useful for the student youth". Similarly Goyena published the Aritmética Elemental in 1905 which was a widely referenced text book in both Honduras and Nicaragua, as well as Elementos de Botánica (1918).

Sources:
M. Ramírez Goyena, 1911, Flora Nicaragüense conteniendo la botánica elemental
J. T. Mejia, 2002, "Miguel Ramirez Goyena-Nicaragua":
http://genforum.genealogy.com/nicaragua/messages/341.html
, accessed December 2009.
Wikipedia, Miguel Ramírez Goyena
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_Ram%C3%ADrez_Goyena, accessed December 2009.