Whastic Rishi Arora

Dr. Sushila Nayyar is perhaps best known for being the personal doctor to Mahatma Gandhi. She can be seen besides him, supporting him and helping him walk in a lot of photos. Her story however goes much further than these photos. She was a freedom fighter who played pivotal roles in the struggle against British. She went on to be the Union Minister of Health and set up the first rural medical college of Independent India. Her political career and public health advocacy played important roles in shaping the healthcare systems in a young and developing India.



The relatives were afraid to shelter the children of rebelsSushila Nayyar - Understanding Gandhi: Gandhians in Conversation with Fred J Blum



Sushila Nayyar was born in 1914 in a small town in a middle-class family which was devoted to Gandhi. Sushila had two older brothers, oldest was Pyarelal Ji, who was serving as an aid to Gandhi. She met Gandhi the first time when she was just six years old when her mother took her along to meet him in Rohtak where he asked her to meet him later in Lahore instead. Sushila’s father had already passed away and her mother wanted to request Gandhi to let her son Pyarelal return home to take care of her family. During the meeting with Gandhi, her mother could not say what she had rehearsed and instead asked him to return Pyarelal after a few years. Noticing Sushila’s non-khadi clothes, Gandhi later asked her mother “Why don’t you give this little girl to me”, a request her mother denied. While Sushila was at a boarding school, her mother was often in prison for activities related to the Satyagrah movement. This brought her close to the Ashram where she used to spend her vacations. “The relatives were afraid to shelter the children of rebels.” She said in an interview with Fred J Blum.



Sushila studied Medicine at Lady Hardinge Medical College in Delhi, from where she earned her MBBS. She took a course of studies in maternal and child health in Kolkata. There she helped Gandhi while he was suffering from High Blood Pressure. On insistence of Dr. B. C. Roy, Gandhi’s doctor, she returned with and stayed with Gandhi for a month to monitor his health. In 1939, Gandhi travelled to Rajkot and took Sushila with him as his ‘Personal Physician’. She wrote in her book ‘Mahatma Gandhi’s Last Imprisonment’, “I was flattered but felt somewhat embarrassed by the title as I was just a raw graduate, very young and inexperienced. When Journalists approached me for the news about Gandhiji’s health, I could hardly talk with them”.



Gandhiji was not the man to keep a doctor for himself. So, I became the doctor for all the Ashram inmates and the villagers around Sevagram. I set up a dispensary in Sevagram, and learnt to train and use volunteers to fight epidemics and give medical care to villagers. In this way I was initiated into the concept of integrated, preventive and curative medical practice and community medicine which, as everyone today agrees, must form the basis of India’s health services.Sushila Nayyar - Understanding Gandhi: Gandhians in Conversation with Fred J Blum



Sushila completed her exams for Doctorate of Medicine from the same college in 1942 and was awaiting results. She was planning to travel back to Sevagram but got a tip from her acquaintance working for the Viceroy’s office that there were going to be mass arrests in Bombay during an AICC meeting. Quoting her, “I had no notion at that time that I was going to plunge headlong into the Quit India Movement on reaching Bombay. I arrived in Bombay on August 8, as the train had to do a detour because of breaches on the railway line owing to heavy rains. The next day I found myself in Prison.”



On 8th August 1942, Mahatma Gandhi declared the ‘Quit India Movement’ at Gowalia Tank Maidan after a near unanimous vote at the AICC meeting. It was a clear demand that the British leave India in an orderly manner. Gandhi was arrested the follow

Lalitha was born on 27th August 1919 in a middle class Telegu family in Chennai. She was the fifth of seven children. Her father and all of her brothers were engineers from College of Engineering, Guindy (CEG), University of Madras, while her sisters were educated up to 10th grade. While it is still a concern, the practice of early marriage was common during those times. Lalitha was married at the age of 15. Her parents insisted that she continue her education even after marriage. Although it came to a stop after she completed her Secondary School or 10th grade education. In 1937, at the age of 18 she gave birth to her daughter Syamala. Just four months later, her husband passed away.



Being a young mother is difficult, being a widow with a baby, even more so. Widows in India face a lot of challenges, often based in tradition. Some such traditions have been extremely inhumane. From Sati, which forced women into a ritualistic immolation on husband’s pyre to having to renounce all wealth and their identity. In most parts of India women are still forced or socially pressured into giving up vanity, sometimes including only wearing white sarees and shaving their heads, and be excluded from all social events. These issues and other factors force women to live out their lives in Ashrams especially made for them. At Society of Women Engineers’ first international conference in 1964, Lalitha said “150 years ago, I would have been burned at the funeral pyre with my husband’s body “. Her daughter Syamala said (to The Better India), “When my father passed away, mom had to suffer more than she should have. Her mother-in-law had lost her 16th child and took out that frustration on the young widow. It was a coping mechanism and today, I understand what she was going through. However, my mother decided not to succumb to societal pressures. She would educate herself and earn a respectable job.”





Lalitha wanted to become self-sufficient and support her daughter, so she decided to get a professional degree. She joined Queen Mary’s College in Chennai and completed her Intermediate education with first class. Women in India had started earning regular degrees by now. Some of the most famous pioneers being Janaki Ammal and Kadambini Ganguly. Most of these were in Medical field but a career in medicine did not seem appealing to Lalitha as she did not want to leave baby Syamala during field work. Instead, she wanted to become an engineer like her father and brothers. She wanted a regular-hours job so she could spend time with and raise her daughter. Her father, Pappu Subba Rao was a teacher at CEG, he approached the principal Dr. K.C. Chacko on her behalf. While her grades were good enough for a man to get into CEG, they had to not only convince the Principal but also take permission from the British government. The Principal and Director of Public Instruction RM Statham, decided it was time for the college to admit Women Students.



Lalitha was granted an admission in 1940 into the four-year electrical engineering program. After the initial reluctance, authorities and officials of the college were supportive of her. Syamala says, “Contrary to what people might think, the students at amma’s college were extremely supportive. She was the only girl in a college with hundreds of boys but no one ever made her feel uncomfortable and we need to give credit to this. The authorities arranged for a separate hostel for her too. I used to live with my uncle while amma was completing college and she would visit me every weekend”. After a few months, at the initiative of Lalitha’s father, CEG advertised open admissions for women. As a result, two more women entered the college in the same year, Leelamma George and P. K. Theressia, who were remarkable in their own right.



Lalitha, Thressia, and Leelamma graduated from CEG in 1943. Syamala explains, “Both of them were juniors to my mother by a year. However, all three of them g

As a young girl, Maryam used to make up stories in her head. In her creations, one day she’d be a leader, one day a hero, and some days she’d travel the world to fulfill her destiny. Perhaps even more remarkable was her real life. She dared to dream in a nation fresh out of war and challenged the social norms around. She saw the connections which threaded different fields of mathematics and explored the web of hyperbolic surfaces. Her research not only illuminated her own path, but opened avenues for others who came after her. She was the first woman to be awarded a Field Medal in Mathematics. We might know little of her, but every little girl in Iran knows the name.



Maryam Mirzakhani was born on 12th May 1977 in Tehran, the capital city of Iran. She had no dreams of becoming a mathematician. As a child all she wanted to do was to read all the fictional books she could find and watch TV documentaries of famous people including Marie Curie and Helen Keller. She was inspired to become a writer and from a young age had a habit of doodling. She completed her elementary school education in Tehran about the time when the Iran-Iraq war ended. She moved to a Farzanegan School for her middle school education. Farzanegan Schools were gendered schools established by Iran’s National Organization for Development of Exceptional Talents. These schools had better resources and better paid teachers. “I think I was the lucky generation”, she said, during an interview, “any older I would not have got these opportunities”.





In the same school in 6th grade she met Roya Beheshti, who would become her lifelong friend. Mirzakhani and Beheshti found a common interest to indulge in. They used to explore the bookstores near their school and buy random books off the shelves. Books during this period were very cheap and they weren’t allowed to browse or read them in stores. Beheshti says, “I remember a time when Maryam was not good at math. In the first year Maryam was the top student in every class except math”. She adds “Maryam got her test back and she got 16/20” – “Maryam was so frustrated that before putting the test in her bag, she tore it apart and said that, that was it for her. And she was not going to even try to do better. This is Maryam when she was 11. That didn’t last long, after the summer break she came back with her confidence regain and she started to do very well”. Mirzakhani’s Mathematics teacher did not think of her as a talented student, which was a blow to her confidence. At that age “it is so important what others see in you”, Mirzakhani said in an interview with Quanta.



The following year, however, Mirzakhani had a more encouraging teacher and as a result, her confidence re-emerged. Beheshti and Mirzakhani found another common interest in Mathematics after that. They both graduated to high school where they found questions to a national competition to pick candidates for International Olympiad in Informatics. They managed to solve three of the six problems over the course of several days. This gave Mirzakhani something to aspire for. They met their principal and demanded problem solving classes in mathematics comparable to the ones being taught in Boys’ school. Mirzakhani recalled her principal as being very supportive and strong, “If we really wanted something, she would make it happen”. Their principal encouraged them even though there had never been a girl on the International Team. Mirzakhani believed that the support and encouragement she received from the principal “has influenced my life quite a lot”.





Mirzakhani and Beheshti became the first women qualified for the Iranian Math Olympiad team in 1994. Mirzakhani earned a Gold medal that year scoring 41 out of 42 points, Beheshti won the Silver Medal with 35/42 points. Mirzakhani wasn’t done yet; she returned to the Olympiad the following year and achieved a perfect score and became the first Iranian to do so

When I started this podcast, my plan for the first series was to talk about the women in science who have inspired me but whose contributions have been overlooked by society. I wanted to create do three episodes and then move on to other topics. I did not expect that during my research, I would find so many others who have been ignored by history, or did not receive the recognition that they deserve. For my benefit, and for the benefit of others who these stories might inspire, I have decided to continue this series.



"I wonder whether the tiny atoms and nuclei, or the mathematical symbols, or the DNA molecules have any preference for either masculine or feminine treatment" Chien-Shiung Wu said at a symposium on women in science. By this point in her life, she had been key member of the Manhattan Project, author of a standard read book for Nuclear Physics, and ‘broken’ one of the ‘Laws of Physics’. Chien-Shiung Wu and her experiments revolutionized our understanding of nuclear physics.



Wu was born in 1912, in a Liuhe, a small town near Shanghai, in Jiangsu province of China. She was the second child with two brothers. They were all named using a family tradition involving a phrase which can be translated to ‘heroes and outstanding figures’. Her name can be translated to ‘A strong hero’ Wu. Her father was an Engineer and an Educator. He was involved in the Republican revolution of 1911 and revolt against Yuan Shikai, the first president of the new republic in 1913. He founded the first school for girls in the region to try to improve education among girls. He and his wife visited families asking them to allow their daughters to study. He encouraged her to read and study mathematics from a young age. Wu received her elementary school education at a school for girls founded by her father. She graduated from the school and at the age of 11 moved to a boarding school. There she graduated top of her class, majoring in Mathematics. She attended Shanghai Gong Xue Public School for one year, where she met renowned scholar, Professor Shi Hu who became one of her long-term mentors.



She moved on to National Central University in Taiwan. Wu studied Mathematics but changed her major in second year to Physics. She served as a student leader during 1930-1934, during which she led several demonstrations urging the govt to take stronger actions against Japanese aggression. She led an occupation of the presidential courtyard which gained them an audience with the President. In college, Wu especially enjoyed taking classes with Professor Shi Shiyuan, who had returned from her role model, Marie Curie’s lab in Paris in 1933 after his PhD under her. He used to tell her stories about Curie and her perseverance in a field dominated by men. Wu did her senior thesis with Shi concerning crystal structure and Bragg’s law on x-ray diffraction. In a crystal, all atoms are at nearly equal distances. If the wavelength of light falling on it matches with the distance between the atoms, you get constructive interference. You can use this effect to find the distance between atoms and study the structure of crystals. She graduated in 1934 with top honours at the top of her class and earned a B.S. degree.



She worked as a teaching assistant for a year at Physics Department of the National Chekiang University in Hangzhou. Wu then moved to a research assistant position in the Academia Sinica’s Institute of Physics in Shanghai. There she worked on x-ray crystallography under Jinghui Gu (Zing Whai Ku), who had received her PhD in physics from the University of Michigan. With financial support from her family and encouragement from Gu, she decided to do her PhD from University of Michigan, same as Gu. She learned some English and boarded the ship President Hoover, bound for San Francisco, USA.



Shortly after reaching San Francisco she visited the University of California at Berkeley. There she met Luke Chia-Liu Yuan, who had arrived

"When girls are in elementary school, they think they can be anyone, they can do anything. All of a sudden, they get into high school, and they get into science classes, and besides the fact that they’re doing as well or better than the boys in the class, they’re looking toward their future, and they see posters full of male scientists. They don’t see themselves on the lab bench. They don’t see where their place is". Chien-Shiung Wu, one of the most prominent scientists of 20th century who wasn't included in a Nobel prize granted for her own experiment.



Science, though a quintessentially rational profession, has been plagued by irrational social biases. Women have always been underrepresented, underpaid, and unrecognised in sciences. The lack of recognition alone does not represent the entirety of the problem. One of the biggest factors in lack of representation of 50% of the population is their systematic exclusion from the academics.



Lack of encouragement from a young age, restrictions on feminity, and outright rejections, women in STEM face these and a lot more. Sometimes however we see a star push away the dust around it and shine bright despite the challenges. Dr. Kamala Sohonie was one of such stars. Dr. Kamala had a lot of 'Firsts' to her name, leading on to become the first Indian Woman 'on whom the title of PhD (in Science) degree was conferred'.



Kamala Bhagvat was born in 1912, in a highly-educated family. Her father and uncle were among the first Chemists to graduate from Indian Institute of Sciences (Then Tata Institute of Sciences) in Bengaluru. Kamala had a supportive family and in-house role models, so it was no surprise when she decided to become a Chemist herself. She finished school at top of her batch and enrolled into B.Sc. Physics and Chemistry course at Bombay Presidency College under Bombay University. She topped her batch again and graduated with proverbial Flying Colours.



Born into an affluential family with two alumni, and topper of the University merit list, she thought her admission into IISC would be easy. She failed to account for the bias against women at that time, her application was rejected. The Director of the Institute at that time was Nobel Laureate Sir C. V. Raman. Sir Raman was a man of principles, one of them was "I am not going to take any girls in my institute!". Which was his reply to Kamala's father and uncle's request for reconsideration.



Refusing to settle for any other institute, or stand down against discrimination, Kamala persisted. She met Sir Raman and asked for reasons and assured him that she would complete her course with distinction, and yet Raman ignored her requests. Then 22-year-old Kamala resorted to Satyagrah in Raman's Office. Sir Raman, unable to provide a valid official justification for the rejection, relented. He accepted Kamala's application with some conditions which she had to accept. He did not admit her as a regular candidate, she had to work late nights as per instructions of her guide, and she was not to 'Distract her male colleagues'.



Kamala was to later recount at an event by Indian Women Scientists’ Association (IWSA). "Though Raman was a great scientist, he was very narrow-minded. I can never forget the way he treated me just because I was a woman. Even then, Raman didn’t admit me as a regular student. This was a great insult to me. The bias against women was so bad at that time. What can one expect if even a Nobel Laureate behaves in such a way?"



Kamala wasn't the first woman at IISC, neither was she first to be treated unfairly by the management. IISC only had permanent hostels for men, women were allowed accommodation on temporary basis on the campus. She and two other candidates in the hostel faced unsafe living conditions and other issues during this time. Sir Raman's wife, Mrs. Lokasundari Raman was the Warden of Women's Hostel. Their request for a permanent hostel was denied by Ms Lokasundari on the basis tha

It is a little bit of science, a little bit of social issues, and a little bit of everything else.