Breakdown of La que reivindicó el descubrimiento fue la profesora.
ser
to be
el profesor
teacher
que
that / than
la
the (feminine)
Questions & Answers about La que reivindicó el descubrimiento fue la profesora.
Why use La que instead of just Quien?
In pseudo-cleft sentences like this one, you can use either La que or Quien to mean "The one who." La que is used here to explicitly match the feminine gender of the emphasized subject (la profesora). While quien is also perfectly correct, it doesn't show gender, so La que gives a hint about who we are talking about right from the start.
Does reivindicó mean "vindicated"?
Not exactly. While they look similar, reivindicar usually means to claim a right, demand recognition, or claim authorship for something (like a discovery or an achievement). Here, it means she claimed the discovery as her own work. To say "vindicate" in the sense of clearing someone's name from suspicion, you would usually use exculpar or absolver.
Why is the verb ser in the preterite (fue) instead of the imperfect (era)?
Could I flip the sentence order and put la profesora at the beginning?