Argentine botanist, Ana Maria Ragonese was born in Buenos Aires and studied at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), gaining her doctorate in Natural Sciences from the Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences (UBA) in 1960. She began to teach in the same faculty, giving courses in plant anatomy and directing theses. Here she began as an assistant to the chief of practical work and later became an adjunct professor, a role she filled until 1974. At this time Ragonese was also the technical secretary of the Miguel Lillo Institute and a researcher at the Institute of Agricultural Botany. In 1962 she became a researcher for the Council for Research in Science and Technology (CONICET) and the Faculty of Agronomy at UBA Ragonese was awarded a scholarship from CONICET in 1971 that allowed her to travel to the U.K. to research at the Jodrell Laboratory of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. She also researched in the palaeobotany division of the Argentine Museum of Natural Sciences 'Bernardino Rivadavia' in Buenos Aires before finally settling in the Darwinion Institute of Botany until her retirement in 1990. A member of the Argentine Society of Botany and the International Association of Wood Anatomists, her research focused on foliar and fruit anatomy of the Frankeniaceae and the genera Adesmia, Dimorphandra and Mora (Fabaceae) Pterocaulon (Asteraceae) and Rhynchospora (Cyperaceae). In the field of wood anatomy she studied the Araliaceae, Myrtaceae, Asteraceae and fossil wood morphology and was also involved in the taxonomic revision of some groups, publishing numerous articles in each of these fields.

Sources:
Bacigalupo, N. M. and Guaglianone, E. R., 1999, "Ana Maria Ragonese (1928-1999) ", Darwiniana 37(3-4): 341.