7 Brilliant Indian Female Scientists Who Inspire Us All

Just like other professions in India, male scientists have been dominating the field of science. An Indian, when being asked if they know any Indian scientist, Srinivasa Ramanujan or APJ Abdul Kalam is the only answer that they can think of. It’s not often that we hear the name of an Indian female scientist.

This might cause people to think that women don’t contribute to science, but that’s totally wrong. Over the years, there have been many women making significant contributions to the field of science. Here is the list of 7 Indian female scientists who inspire us all.

1. Mangala Narlikal

Mangala, an Indian mathematician, has worked in both Advanced Mathematics and Simple Arithmetic field at the University of Mumbai and the University of Pune. She is one of the country’s few female mathematics researchers. 16 years after she got married, she got her Ph.D.

When she was working at TIFR or Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, she published several mathematical books in both Marathi and English. In 2002, she received the Vishwanath Parvati Gokhale Award for one of her books, She is also a teacher and is known for turning mathematics into an interesting subject to teach her students.

2. Aditi Pant

She is an oceanographer. During the 1983 Indian expedition, she was the first Indian woman who traveled to Antarctica to study oceanography and geology. She got her inspiration from the Open Sea book of Alister Hardy, she got her MS, majoring in Marine Sciences at the University of Hawaii with a scholarship from the US government.

Aditi studies her Ph.D. at Westfield College in London. After she got her degree, she came back to India and joined the National Institute of Oceanography. She has carried out coastal studies as well as traveling along the Indian west coast.

3. Indira Hinduja

As an infertility specialist and gynecologist, she is the first to deliver a baby conceived with IVF (in vitro fertilization). Indira is a pioneer of GIFT technique and has also helped deliver the country’s first baby conceived using this technique. She is also the one behind the oocyte donation method for menopausal patients and premature ovarian failure.

4. Paramjit Khurana

Paramjit works in the fields of Molecular Biology, Genomics, and Plant Biotechnology. She has over 125 published scientific papers and is a professor at the Department of Plant Molecular Biology at the University of Delhi. She has been rewarded with several awards. On 2011 International Women’s Day, she received the Certificate of Honour.

5. Sunetra Gupta

A professor and a novelist, she currently teaches Theoretical Epidemiology at UK’s Oxford University. Sunetra is passionate about researching infectious agents causing diseases like malaria and influenza, among others. The Zoological Society of London has awarded her the Scientific Medal. With her contribution made in the field of science, she has also been rewarded the Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award.

6. Nandini Harinath

Nandini is a rocket scientist at the Satellite Centre of ISRO in Bengaluru. During her 20 years working here, she has taken part in 14 missions. She was the Mangalyaan mission’s deputy operations director. She once said that through Star Trek, she got her first exposure to science.

7. Rohini Godbole

Rohini is a physicist and a professor at the Indian Institute of Science’s Centre for High Energy Physics in Bengaluru. For over three decades, she has been focusing on Particle Phenomenology. She has a particular interest in exploring and understanding the Standard Model of Particle Physics. She is an elected fellow at the Science Academy of the Developing World and three Indian Science academies.