My Science School

Muthayya Vanitha and Ritu Karidhal created history when they became the first women directors to lead ISRO’s Chandrayaan 2 moon mission. This was the first time that women were put in charge of a big budget launch at ISRO.

Of the two rocket women, Muthayya Vanitha, an electronics system engineer from Chennai, graduated from the College of Engineering Guindy and joined ISRO as a junior engineer. She was later placed in managerial positions and went on to act as deputy project director for several satellites where she handled data operations.

She was also part of the Mangalyaan mission to Mars in 2013 and became project director of Chandrayaan 2 in 2019. The mission aimed to land a probe on the Moon surface unlike the previous Chandrayaan mission that aimed to orbit the Moon.

Vanitha’s responsibilities included complete oversight of the development and implementation of all systems during the mission. The launch was successful and took place on July 22, 2019.

She was given the ‘Best Woman Scientist’ Award by the Astronomical Society of India in 2006. She was also noted as one of ‘five scientists to watch’ by Nature in 2019.

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Saina Nehwal is the first and only female player from India to be ranked world No1. Born on March 17, 1990 in Hisar, Haryana to Dr Harvir Singh Nehwal and Usha Rani Nehwal (a state level badminton player of Haryana) Saina has won over 24 international titles attaining the world no 1 ranking in 2015.

She won the BWF World Junior Championships in 2008 and created history when she won the bronze medal at the London 2012 Olympic Games.

She is credited for popularizing the sport of badminton in India. In 2016, the Government of India conferred the Padma Bhushan on her. She has also been awarded the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna and the Arjuna Award.

Pusarla Venkata Sindhu, popularly known as PV Sindhu, is a badminton world champion and silver medallist at the 2016, Rio Summer Olympics.

She is only the second individual athlete from India to win two consecutive medals at the Olympic Games. She was born on July 5, 1995 to PV Ramana and P Vijaya, both national level volleyball players. At the age of 8 she was inspired by Pullela Gopichand’s victory in the All England Open Badminton Championship in 2001 and later joined Pullela Gopichand’s Badminton Academy.

She is a recipient of the ‘Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna’ and the ‘Padma Shri’. She was conferred with the Padma Bhushan in January 2020.

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Arundhati Bhattacharya is a banker who was the first woman to become Chairperson of the State Bank of India (SBI). She was born on March 18, 1956, in Kolkata, West Bengal to Prodyut Kumar Mukherjee, an engineer at Bokaro Steel Plant and Kalyani Mukherjee, a homoeopathy consultant.

She attended St Xavier’s School in Bokaro and studied English literature at Lady Brabourne College in Kolkata. Bhattacharya graduated from Jadavpur University in Kolkata.

While studying at University, Bhattacharya passed the entrance exam for the post of probationary officer (PO) at SBI and began her long and illustrious journey in the banking industry. In her decades-long career with the SBI, Bhattacharya brought in several revolutionary changes that benefitted the Bank. She also introduced several pro-women policies for SBI employees. Under Bhattacharya’s leadership, SBI evolved from a state-run lender into a customer-friendly bank. She retired as the chairperson of SBI in 2017.

She was listed among the ‘Top 100 Global Thinkers’ by Foreign Policy magazine. In 2018, Bhattacharya received the ‘Business Leader of the Year’ title at the Asian Awards and the Harvard Business Review Ascend published her interview titled ‘Arundhati Bhattacharya: The Making of SBI’s First Woman Chairperson’.

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The movie ‘Mangalyaan’ portrays the true story of a team of mostly women scientists who put a satellite into orbit around planet Mars.

One of the real-life scientists portrayed in the movie is Dr Ritu Karidhal Srivastava. An aerospace engineer, Ritu was born on April 13, 1975 in Lucknow, UP into a middle-class family.

As a child, she was fascinated by space and spent hours gazing at the sky and dreaming about the stars and planets. She completed her MSc in physics from the University of Lucknow and went on to pursue a PhD in physics. She passed the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineers (GATE) and joined IISc, Bangalore to pursue aerospace engineering. She joined ISRO in 1997 and joined the Mangalyaan-1 team as Deputy Operations Director in 2012. She oversaw the detailing and execution of the craft’s onward autonomy system, in other words the ‘brain of the satellite’, which operated the satellite’s functions independently in space and responded appropriately to malfunctions.

The success of Mangalyaan -1 catapulted ISRO into international stardom. India became the 4th country in the world to reach Mars. Furthermore, it had done it in a record 18 months and at a fraction of the cost of similar international missions. Dr Karidhal received the ISRO ‘Young Scientist Award’ in 2007 from APJ Abdul Kalam, then president of India.

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Ridhima Pandey is India’s very own Greta Thunberg. Ridhima, who was born in 2007, belongs to Uttarakhand, where extreme weather has caused many deaths due to floods and landslides in the past 10 years. Her father Dinesh Pandey is also a climate change activist working to spread awareness in this field.

In 2016 at age 9, Ridhima filed a petition against the Indian Government before the National Green Tribunal on the issue of environment pollution and how environment protection laws were being routinely flouted in the country. Though the petition was dismissed, it focused the spotlight on the enormity of the climate crisis and caught the attention of national and international media.

In 2019 Ridhima, along with 16 other children, petitioned the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child to hold five of the world’s leading economic powers - Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany and Turkey - accountable for their inaction on the climate crisis.

She wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in September 2020, about the situation and urged the government to take action. She is a member of the Civil Society and Youth Advisory Council for COP 26 and a popular TEDx speaker.

14-year-old Ridhima has been listed as one of BBC’s ‘Top 100 most Influential Women’ in the world for the year 2020. Her biography ‘Children vs Climate Change’ is a treatise on her fight to save the Earth. She says in the book, “I want to save our future. I want to save the future of all the children and all people of future generations.”

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Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw is India’s first self-made woman billionaire.

She was born on March 23, 1953 in Bangalore, to Rasendra Mazumdar, the head brewmaster at United Breweries and Yamini Mazumdar, who owns a laundry business. Mazumdar initially planned to pursue her father’s trade. She graduated at the top of her class from the University of Ballarat, Melbourne in 1975 with a degree in brewing.

However, she soon found that brewing jobs were closed to women in India. Undaunted, she joined an Irish company, Biocon Biochemicals founded by entrepreneur Leslie Auchincloss. In 1978, Auchincloss offered to make her a partner in a new venture, Biocon India.

The company’s brief was to extract papain (an enzyme of papaya) and isinglass (obtained from tropical catfish). Within a year, Biocon India was able to manufacture these enzymes and export them to the US and Europe, becoming the first Indian company to do so. At the end of her first year, Mazumdar used her earnings to buy a 20-acre property for the expansion of the company and has revolutionised the biotech industry since then. She has also contributed significantly to clinical research and carries out many philanthropic activities.

She received the Padma Bhushan for her pioneering work in industrial biotechnology in 2005 and the Othmer Gold Medal for ‘Outstanding contributions to the Progress of Science and Chemistry’ in 2014. In 2019, she was listed as the 68th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes Magazine.

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The post of Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of the Reserve Bank of India was created as part of the organizational change brought in by former Governor Urjit Patel in 2016. The RBI started inviting applications for the post in 2017, finally selecting Sudha Balakrishnan after much deliberation.

A chartered accountant by profession, Balakrishnan was the Vice President of National Securities Depositories (NSDL), prior to her appointment. She took over as the first CFO of the RBI in 2018.

The CFO is responsible for reporting financial information of the bank, establishing ac-counting policies, ensuring compliance with regulations, communicating the expected and actual financial performance of the bank, and overseeing budget processes.

Balakrishnan has a challenging profile as the 12th executive director of the RBI. She is in charge of the government and bank account department which processes government transactions such as payments and revenue collections such as taxes. She oversees the central bank’s investments in the country and abroad and manages the RBI balance sheet to ensure accounting policies and procedures comply with regulations.

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When 24-year-old Arunima Sinha stood atop Mount Everest on May 21, 2013, she had not just accomplished the world’s toughest climb, but she had done it with an artificial limb! Just two years prior to this, on April 12, 2011 she was pushed out of a moving train by some miscreants. She lost her left leg in this horrific ordeal.

Undaunted and filled with the desire to prove herself, she dreamed of climbing Mt Everest. Shortly after being released from hospital, she met Bachendri Pal, the first Indian woman to climb Mt Everest. Pal encouraged and inspired Arunima to fulfil her dream.

She is also the world’s first female amputee to conquer Mount Everest. She went on to scale Mt Vinson, the highest peak in Antarctica, Mt Kilimanjaro in Africa, Mount Kosciuszko in Australia, Mount Elbrus in Europe, and Mount Aconcagua in South America.

Arunima grew up in Ambedkar Nagar, near Lucknow. Born on July 20, 1988, she has an elder sister and younger brother. Her father worked as an engineer and mother as a health supervisor. As a child, she enjoyed sports such as cycling, football and volleyball.

She was awarded the Padma Shri in 2015 and wrote an inspiring account of her journey to the top of the world in her book, ‘Born again on the Mountain’.

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Imagine walking 5 km in the sweltering heat, carrying buckets of water and tending to 385 saplings planted by the side of a road, every single day for years. That is exactly what Aalada Marada Thimmakka, or Saalumarada Thimmakka as she is locally known, did.

Saalumarada, who is 110-years-old, was married to a young boy named Bikaalu Chikkaiah in Ramanagara district in Karnataka when she was about 12.

Thimmakka lived peacefully for some time and worked as a casual labourer in a nearby quarry. However, even after many years of marriage the couple remained childless. The local people began to taunt Thimmakka and she became very sorrowful.

She began to find solace in planting banyan tree saplings along a nearby road. Her husband Chikkaiah helped her and before long they had planted a whole stretch of road in Magadi taluk of rural Bengaluru. Additionally they planted 8,000 trees in the surrounding areas.

Fifty years on, the giant banyan trees provide shade and shelter to many creatures and are estimated to be worth Rs 150 crores. At a time when the rate of deforestation is estimated at 10 million hectares per year, Thimmakka’s actions are not just superhuman, but priceless for the environment.

Her work has been recognized by the Government of India and she was honoured with the Padma Shri in 2019. An organization based in Los Angelus, USA is named ‘Thimmakka’s Resources for Environmental Education’ after her and she was listed by the BBC as one of the most influential and inspirational women of the world, in 2016.

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Avani Chaturvedi, along with Mohana Jitarwal and Bhavana Kanth, became India’s first ever fighter pilots on June 18, 2016.

Chaturvedi scripted history when she became the first Indian woman fighter pilot to fly a MiG-21 Bison solo for 30 minutes from Gujarat’s Jamnagar air base, in 2018.

Chaturvedi was born on October 27, 1993 in Rewa, Madhya Pradesh to Dinkar Chaturvedi, an engineer and Savita Chaturvedi, a homemaker. She did her schooling from Deolond and earned her BTech from Banasthali University, Rajasthan. She became interested in flying after joining the flying club at her college. She completed her training from the Indian Air Force Academy, Dundigal. Chaturvedi plays chess and sketches in her free time.

In 2018, she was awarded a doctorate from Banasthali Vidyapeeth. Chaturvedi was awarded the ‘Nari Shakti Puraskar’ by President Ram Nath Kovind on March 9, 2020.

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When it comes to women’s tennis in India, there is one player who stands head and shoulders above the rest - Sania Mirza.

Born in Mumbai, Maharashtra on November 15, 1986 to Sports journalist Imran Mirza and Naseema Mirza, her family moved to Hyderabad shortly after Sania’s birth.

Sania began playing tennis at 6 and turned professional at 17 after winning the Girls’ Doubles title at Wimbledon in 2003. She went on to win 10 singles and 13 doubles titles as a junior player. Since then, Mirza has won 6 Grand Slam titles and was ranked India’s No 1 player by the Women’s Tennis Association from 2003 to 2013.

She is a right-handed aggressive baseliner with a powerful forehand and is capable of producing winning shots even from defensive positions. She is responsible for single handedly putting Indian women’s tennis on the global map.

Time Magazine named Mirza in its ‘Heroes of Asia’ list in October 2005. The Economic Times named Mirza one of the ‘Women who Made India Proud’ in March 2010. She was appointed UN Women’s Goodwill Ambassador for South Asia on November, 25, 2013 and figured in Time Magazine’s list of ‘Most Influential People in the World’, in 2016.

Mirza married Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik in 2010 and they have a son, lzhaan Mirza-Malik. Apart from tennis, Mirza also likes cricket and swimming.

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In a world beset by big agricultural bullies like Monsanto (now Bayer), there also exist grassroot environmentalists like Dr. Vandana Shiva, who seek to re-align the sacred relationship between man and earth, which has been broken in her own words, “by the violence in agriculture today”.

Dr Shiva is a food sovereignty and anti-globalisation advocate. She did her schooling from the Convent of Jesus and Mary, Dehradun and earned a master’s degree in the philosophy of science from the University of Guelph in 1977. She received her PhD in philosophy from the University of Western Ontario.

She has written extensively on bioethics, biodiversity and genetic engineering. She is often referred to as the ‘Gandhi of Grain’ due to her passionate resistance to Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) and her advocacy of reverting to practices that involve growing food in tandem with nature and not against it.

She was a vehement critic of Asia’s Green Revolution, which began in the 1960s, to increase food production through higher-yielding seed stocks and increased use of pesticides and fertilizers.

In 1991 Shiva launched Navdanya, meaning ‘Nine Seeds’. The project aimed to counter the monoculture promoted by large corporations by collecting, conserving and distributing indigenous seeds and promoting seed sovereignty in local farming communities. Navdanya has set up 150 community seed banks in India in the last 30 years, a truly unparalleled achievement.

Dr Shiva received the ‘Right Livelihood Award’ in 1993, established by Swedish-German philanthropist Jakob von Uexkull, which is regarded as an alternative Nobel Prize. She is a member of Fundacion IDEAS, Spain’s Socialist Party’s think tank.

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If you thought Wonder Woman a myth, think again! Wonder Woman is an Indian and her name is Seema Rao. She is India’s first and only woman commando trainer.

And just like the fictional Wonder Woman, she runs like Eliud Kipchoge, shoots like William Tell and tackles like Bruce Lee. Additionally, she is an MD in conventional medicine and a world beauty pageant finalist!

At 51, she is one of the few instructors of ‘Jeet Kune Do’, a hybrid martial art inspired by Bruce Lee. She is also the author of 10 books, some of which are used as references by the FBI, INTERPOL and UN forces. She has been featured in Femina, Savvy, Vogue and Forbes magazines.

An 8th degree black belt holder in martial arts and a specialist in Close Quarter Battle (CQB) she and her husband, Major Deepak Rao, have been training commandos from the NSG, Black Cats, IAF Garuds, Indian Navy MARCOS, BSF, Commando Wing and Army Paratroopers as well as the Mumbai and Maharashtra Police, since 1994.

They invented the ‘Rao System of Reflex Fire’ for close quarters combat. They have trained the Indian Armed Forces for over two decades, waiving aside all compensation. Their methodology was instrumental in training the Anti-Terror Squad - Quick Reaction Teams to help fend off terror attacks in urban areas.

Rao’s deep patriotism stems from her father, Prof Ramakant Sinari, who was an Indian freedom fighter. She received the ‘Nari Shakti Puraskar’ in 2019 for her indomitable spirit and service to the nation.

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Pratibha Patil served as the president of India from 2007 to 2012. She is the only woman in history to have held the office.

She was born on December 19, 1934 in Jalgaon, Maharashtra to Narayan Rao Patil and Gangabai Patil. Her mother died when she was 12 and she was brought up by a strict aunt named Baasaheb. She has a double MA in political science and economics and a degree in law from Government Law College, Bombay.

At the age of 27, she joined the Indian National Congress and became a member of the Maharashtra legislative assembly. She won her first election in 1962 contesting from the Edlabad constituency. She then handled the public health and social welfare portfolio in the Government of Maharashtra.

She is married to Dr Devisingh Shekhawat who is a professor and politician. She was appointed governor of Rajasthan in 2004. Patil became the 12th President of India after emerging as a compromise candidate and due to her unstinting loyalty to the Nehru-Gandhi family.

She commuted death sentences of 35 death penalty prisoners to ‘life’, which is a record. She faced some criticism over this but defended herself by asserting that she had come to these decisions after due consideration of the cases. She also faced criticism over taking family members on foreign trips.

While in office, she focused on improving women’s rights in the country and in solving the agrarian crisis.

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You may have heard of Medha Patkar in connection with the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA). This movement was founded by Patkar as a people’s movement against the Narmada Valley Project, which proposed to build several multi-purpose dams across the Narmada River. Patkar undertook a 22-day fast that forced a review of the Sardar Sarovar Dam, one of the biggest projects of the NBA. This protest has been the focal cause in her 32-year long work in the field.

However, Patkar, who completed her MA in social work from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, has been involved in numerous other protests and movements as well, such as fighting for housing rights of slum dwellers in Mumbai, fighting against illegal evictions, protesting against sugar cooperatives falling into the hands of politicians in Maharashtra and protesting against the Kovvada Nuclear project in Andhra Pradesh.

She has based her activism on two basic tenets in the Indian Constitution - the right to life and to livelihood. Her work challenges casteism, communalism and all forms of discrimination.

She was born on December 1, 1954 in Mumbai, Maharashtra to Vasant Khanolkar, a well-known freedom fighter and trade unionist and Indu Khanolkar a women’s activist. Given her family background, it is not surprising that she grew up to be highly motivated, tenacious and fearless.

She has won numerous awards such as the ‘Right Livelihood Award’ in 1991 and the ‘Mother Teresa Award’ for social Justice in 2014.

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