Although he came from a relatively wealthy family, he had fallen out with his mother who wanted him to pursue a law career rather than study medicine.

With the Centre facing budgetary constraints she proved adept at adapting old laboratory equipment for use in experiments in areas such as nuclear physics and X-ray spectrography.

Her work was interrupted in 1947 by a decision of Portugal's Estado Novo regime to remove twenty-one professors from Portuguese universities, three of them from the Department of Physics.

In 1956 to 1957, Salgueiro and her husband worked as interns at the Department of Natural Philosophy of the University of Edinburgh, under the direction of Norman Feather, the English nuclear physicist.

On her own, with her husband and with Manuel Valadares, who had obtained his Doctorate under the supervision of Marie Curie, she produced many publications, ranging from journal articles to student textbooks.

[4] Manuel Valadares inspired Salgueiro to make a thematic collection of postage stamps in the area of physics.