Great Women Scientists of India

    Preeti Shankar was an accomplished teacher, researcher and educational expert with a Ph.D. in Computer Science in 1972 from Maryland, USA. She received a special scholarship from the Association of American Universities. She was awarded the Distinguished Visiting Speaker of the IEEE   and the Jaya-Jayant Award for Best Teacher from the Indian Institute of Science. Preeti Shankar had special expertise in the design of compilers and program coding which is an essential component of computers.   Preeti was born in September 1947 in Pune. Born in Goa, her  father Inocencio Monteiro was a Brigadier in the Indian Army. Mother was a teacher of French, Mathematics and Science. In 1958, Preeti's parents shifted from Pune to Jammu for work. Monteiro was posted at Surangode in India-Pakistan border. Preeti missed school for six months and was taught by her mother at home. A few years later, Preeti returned to Pune. There she attended Ferguson College. After that ...

  Two of the first three women engineers at Guindy Engineering College have been introduced, Mrs. E. Lalitha, the first electrical engineer and Thresyamma, the first Chief Engineer in Asia earlier. The third person in the trinity was Leelamma George. Like Chief Engineer Thresya, Leelamma also graduated in Civil Engineering. She was only nineteen years old then. Leelamma was born in 1923 in a Syrian Christian family in Kerala. Her  father A K George was educated in Britain. Mother's name is Annamma. Because of her father's western education, Leelamma's family was quick to adopt progressive ideas. In a society where girls are generally not allowed to go for higher studies, Mr. George was a man who broke the norms and insisted on sending their children to higher education. Leelamma, who showed exceptional intelligence, had passed the intermediate examination at the age of 13. Her father wanted his daughter to become a medical doctor. Accordingly, she was admitted to Ch...

    Mrs. A. Lalita was the first woman to get admission in Guindi Engineering College. We have written about her earlier as the  first  woman Electrical Engineer in India. However, the two engineering students who joined right behind her  were P K Thresya and Leelamma George. All three of them graduated in the same year, 1944, because World War II shortened the study period of Thresya's junior batch students to three and a half years.   Thresya chose civil engineering as her field of study.  After graduating, she joined the then King of Cochin's princely state as a section officer in the Public Works Department. At that time, it was British rule there. After getting independence, she joined Kerala  government services and became the  Chief Engineer in the Public Works Department under the Government of Kerala in 1971. Thus, she became the first woman chief engineer not only in India but also in Asia. After she was promoted to the...

    Dr. Tessy Thomas was a disciple of our Honourable President Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam Missileman as he was known and a woman who made a unique contribution to the field of missile manufacturing in India. She is also known as India's first Missile Woman. She became the leader of the project team that developed the Agni-IV missile at the Défense Research and Development Organization and later became the Director of General Aeronautical Systems. Youth Tessie Thomas was born in April 1963 in Alappuzha, Kerala. Born into a Syrian Christian family, her parents named her Tessi, a shortened version of Mother Teresa's name. There are two opinions that his father was an Air Force officer and or  a small businessman (Wikipedia). When Tessie was 13, her father suffered a stroke and became bedridden. Her mother, who was a teacher, quit her job and became a full-time housewife. The mother tried her best to provide good education to everyone in the family of four sisters and one b...

    Subha Thole is a renowned neuroscientist. The gene that controls the function of the most critical part of the human brain has been discovered by her. A recipient of the Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar Award in 2010, Subha is currently a Professor and Principal Researcher at the Tata Institute of Research, Bombay. She  was the 2014 Infosys Prize winner. Subhas   was  born as the  daughter  of   Aruna P Thole in 1967. Her   mother was involved in the manufacture of  artificial organs for the disabled and cancer patients. Her father was the director of SAMEER, an institute in the Department of Electronics, Government of India. With the encouragement of her parents and school teachers, Subha studied well and showed considerable interest in science subjects. After basic education, biochemistry and biology were chosen for her  college education. Instead of medical school, she studied at St. Xavier's College, Bombay. Fro...

  .   I am not sure whether the mathematical genius Shakuntala Devi can be called a scientist. Without any formal education, she multiplied two 13-digit numbers and found the result in just 28 seconds, the cube root of an 11-digit number in just 10 seconds, and the 7th root of a 33-digit number in 40 seconds.   Born on November 4, 1929, the daughter of a circus performer in Bangalore, Shakuntala Devi was a person who could multiply large numbers and find their square root in seconds. She was really a human computer. Her name was added to the Guinness Book of World Records in 1982. (But the fact that the certificate arrived after her death on April 21  2013  is a paradox). But even before this, on June 18, 1980, the world record was set at London's Imperial College. At a very young age, the child Shakuntala Devi displayed her prodigious talent at the University of Mysore. Shakuntala Devi wrote a number of books, mostly on mathematics and astrology, but ...

    Mrs. Rajeshwari Chatterjee (1922-2010) was a mathematician and electrical engineer, one of the first engineers in India. Her special subjects were electromagnetic theory, microwave technology and radio engineering. She was the first engineer from Karnataka and to complete her Ph.D. She has made many contributions to antenna design in aircraft and spacecraft. World War II ended.  After returning from abroad, she worked as a professor at  the Indian Institute of  Science, Bangalore. She continued her social work with the Indian Association of Women Studies.   Rajeshwari was born on January 24, 1922 in Karnataka. Rajeshwari's schooling was at a special English school founded by her grandmother, Kamalamma Dasappa, the first woman graduates in Mysore. After school, she had planned to study history, but she chose Physics and Mathematics as her subjects in college. And graduated from Bangalore Central College with B.Sc. (Hons) and M.Sc. (Mathematics). ...

  In the early 1950s there was a research student who wandered the narrow streets of Kolkata looking for something to build an X-ray machine for her  research experiments among the iron and rust piles scattered here and there as remnants of the Second World War. It was Purnima Sinha (Sen Gupta) who graduated in 1956 and  first Ph.D. from Calcutta University. The fact that she was under the tutelage of Prof. Satyendranath Bose, one of India's immortal scientists, makes it doubly sweet. Poornima was also someone who fought for women's rights, like Kamala Sohani, who went on a  satyagraha in front of Nobel laureate CV Raman and got admission to Ph.D. in Indian Institute  of Science.   At that time, around ten people were doing research in the Khaira Laboratory of Calcutta University. Most of them had to make their own equipment for the experiments they had to do. Some of them were scavenging to see if they could get any of the equipment left over from ...

  The first Indo-China war in 1962 was at a time when India and China accepted Panchsheel (Five principles)  of Pandit Nehru which was  accepted  by Chinese government. However,  China  attacked  India at the  borders and . 13,454 brave Indian soldiers lost their lives in that war. This was  because India   was not at all  prepared for a war with any of the neighbours as and the defence outlay was very marginal at that time.  The bottom line is that we had to pay a heavy price for being completely unprepared for a war. Everyone got away with putting all the blame on the head of the then Defence Minister Shri.VK Krishnamenon. After this tragic incident, many patriotic young men and women of India joined the army and prepared to protect the nation. The Hindi song “Aaye Mere Watan Ke Logo” which was very popular in our country at that time was thrilling to all those who have loyalty and love for the nation.   Inspi...

    Paramjit Khurana was an Indian botanist who discovered seeds that could be used in all climates. Mrs. Khurana developed hybrid varieties of mulberry, wheat and paddy that can be used even in severe drought conditions. They could block increased heat and even ultraviolet rays. Paramjit Khurana was born on August 15, 1956. She was an expert in plant biotechnology, molecular biology and plant genetic studies. She works as a Professor in Plant Biology at Delhi University. He has received many recognitions. More than 125 research papers are his   Biography Paramjit Khurana received her s B.Sc.(1975), M.Sc.(1977), M.Phil.(1978), Ph.D., in Botany from Delhi University. (1983) degrees. There she started working as a scientist in 1983-84 in the department studying plant cells and microbiology. She was also a teacher at SGTB Khalsa College from 1984-87. She joined Michigan State University as a Research Assistant in 1987-88. After returning from America, she worked ...

  Ayyala Somayajulu Lalita was the first successful woman to enter the engineering field in India, which was almost completely dominated by men. It is a fact that women have not been able to completely break this male dominance even in this era where women are still reluctant to join some engineering branches (e.g. mechanical). It is true that simple engineering was taken up as a profession because of several circumstances. Lalita got married when she was just 15 years old. But before she turned 18, she was widowed and destined to fend for herself with her four-month-old daughter. He had to look for a job to raise his daughter and support his family. Lalita was a normal child who studied well in school and her father was an electrical engineer. So even as a widow with one child, she wanted to study further. But the first problem was what to study. Even then, the first and foremost interest of the girls, who were studying well, was for   medical profession. But she...