2 V.K. Janaki Ammal (1897 – 1984)

 



 Janaki Ammal, who was born in Thalassery in  Kerala and received her doctorate from the University of Michigan in America in 1931, was a distinguished person (Founder Fellow) of the Indian Science Academy, the first Padma Shri awardee and a famous botanist. Her field of research was cytology, the study of plant cells. She has  made significant contributions to the study of plant genetics in India and abroad.

Biographical summary

Janaki was born in 1987 to Dewan Bahadur Edavalat Kakkad Krushnan, a judge in Thalassery, and Kuruvai Devi. Janaki's mother was born to an Indian woman to John Child Hannington, the British colonial ruler of Travancore.

Janaki's primary education was at Sacred Heart Convent, Thalassery. She  then studied at Queen Mary's College, Madras. After graduating with honours in botany from the Presidency College, Madras, she joined the University of Michigan in the United States on a scholarship in 1924. In 1931 she completed her Ph.D. After graduation, she came back to India. She worked as a professor at Women's Christian College, Madras for a few years. After that she  returned to Michigan. In 1956, she was awarded the D.Sc. degree in 1956.

 

She returned to India and worked as a professor at Maharaja's College (now University College) in Thiruvananthapuram from 1932 to 1934. She then joined the John Inns Institute in London. There he continued her research in collaboration with the famous C D Darlington. Both of them remained colleagues for a long time. After returning to India, she joined the Coimbatore Sugarcane Breeding Institute as a C.A. In collaboration with a scientist named Barbour, she created hybrid varieties of sugarcane by genetic mixing. One of the famous names was SG. 63-32 species.

In 1939 she came to Scotland to attend the 7th International Genetics Conference held in Edinburgh. But they could not return because of the outbreak of World War II. She then worked at the John Inns  Centre as CD Darlington's assistant for six years. They both published the Chromosome Atlas of Cruciferous Plants in 1945. From 1945 to 1951, she was invited to the Royal Horticultural Society for plant cytology, where she conducted research on magnolias and its hybrids.

 

She was then appointed as the first Director of the Central Botanical Laboratory at Allahabad on the invitation of the Government of India to reorganize the Botanical Survey of India. From 1962 she worked as a Special Officer in the Regional Research Laboratory, Jammu. She also worked for some time at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Trombe. After November 1970, she settled in Madras. During that time, he worked as an Emirates Scientist at the Centre for Advanced Studies. She continued her studies in a laboratory there until her death in February 1984.

Awards and recognitions

1. List of Famous People of Indian American Descent of the Century published on January 1, 2000.

2. In 1931, she became the first Indian woman to obtain a PhD from any university in America.

3. D.Sc. from University of Michigan. She was the first woman of Asian descent to win.

4. Elected as the first Distinguished Member (Fellow) of the Indian Academy of Sciences in 1957.

5. In 1977, the Government of India honoured her with the Padma Shri Award.

6. In 2000, the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India started giving a national award in the name of Janaki Ammal.

7. Medicinal herbarium in Jammutavi with 25000 plants is named after Janaki Ammal.

8. A scholarship is being awarded in the name of Janaki Ammal at the John Andy’s Centre in Edinburgh.

Reference

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janaki_Ammal

 

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