11 Female Scientists That Receive Special Honor From The Government

To celebrate this year’s Woman’s Day, the Ministry of Woman and Child Development and the Ministry of Science and Technology has revealed that eleven chairs will be set up to honor 11 Indian women scientists. These women have contributed immensely to science but haven’t received the recognition that they deserved.

The two ministries will set up these chairs at different national institutes around the country. The range of fields is diverse, from organic chemistry to cytogenetics to social sciences.

The goal is to facilitate research in the field where these women worked and excelled in.

Researchers who are a part of this will receive funding for their project of up to Rs 1 crore.

As of now, Mothe Teresa has been India’s first and only woman who has gotten a chair for her social work.

Bibha Chowdhuri

As a physicist, Bibha Chowdhuri worked on cosmic rays and particle physics. She also demonstrated that an extensive air shower’s total particle density is proportional to the density of penetrating events.

HD 86801 is a star named after her. It is a yellow-white dwarf star that is in the constellation Sextans.

Irawati Karve

Irawati Karve was a sociologist, anthropologist, writer, and educationist from Maharashtra. In fact, she was India’s first female anthropologist.

She was actually the founder of Pune University’s department of anthropology.

Kamal Ranadive

The biomedical researcher who made groundbreaking achievements in finding the connection between viruses and cancers and curing cancer.

She also took part in the establishment of the first tissue culture research laboratory in India at the Indian Cancer Research Centre, Mumbai. She was also one of the founding members of the Indian Women Scientists’ Association.

Rajeshwari Chatterjee

She was Karnataka’s first female engineer. After finishing her studies, she started working at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore as a professor. Later, she became the Department of Electrical Communication Engineering’s chairperson.

She was also the country’s first person to have research the Microwave Engineering field. She, together with her husband, established a laboratory for microwave research.

Raman Parimala

An Indian mathematician who had contributed immensely to algebra. She is working at Emory University as a professor of mathematics.

She has also taught at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai.

Anna Mani

Anna Mani was a meteorologist and physicist. She retired after working at the Indian Meteorological Department as the Deputy Director-General and at the Raman Research Institute as a visiting professor.

She has carried out research in solar ration, wind energy, ozone measurements, and meteorological instrumentation fields.

Janaki Ammal

Born in 1897, Ammal was a scientist and botanist. She made several groundbreaking achievements in botany, cytogenetics, and taxonomy fields.

The Indian Government awarded her the Padmashri for her contributions. Her research in cytogenetical studios on Terminalia, sugarcane, dhatura, Cymbopogon, and Dioscorea has been followed by other scientists.

Kadambini Ganguly

She was a female physician from India and the British Empire. She was one of the first female physicians in India and South Asia to receive western medicine training.

Asima Chatterjee

Asima Chatterjee was the first Indian chemist to have made contributions in the development of anti-malarial drugs as well as anti-epileptic drugs and research on the Indian subcontinent’s medicinal plants.

Darshan Ranganathan

Darshan Ranganathan worked as an organic chemist. She was known for her research in bio-organic chemistry, protein folding, molecular design, supramolecular assemblies, etc.

She was a member of the National Academy of Sciences. In 1999, she received the A.V. Rama Rao Foundation and the Third World Academy of Sciences Award in Chemistry for her contributions in the field of bio-organic chemistry.

Archana Sharma

A renowned botanist, cell biologist, cytotoxicologist, and cytogeneticist. She studied speciation in vegetatively reproducing plants, cell division in adult nuclei, and the cause of polyteny in plants’ differentiated tissues.

In her career, she published 10 books and about 400 research papers. Together with her husband, in 1965, she published the Chromosome Techniques – Theory and Practice book. She was also Nucleus’ founder. Nucleus is an international journal on cytology and allied topics.

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