Dr (Mrs) Vishiesh Verma
The year 2012 was the most memorable year for Women Scientists of India. They made their country proud by their achievements. Ms. N.Valarmathi, ISRO’s Bangalore-based project Director for the space mission took the credit for successful launch of RISAT-1, a project which took almost a decade in the making. RISAT-1 featured an array of new technologies, such as the synthetic Aperture Radar that penetrates cloud cover and takes images even during the night. The woman scientist, who has passion for communication systems, joined ISRO in 1984, after a Master’s degree in Engineering from Anna University. Ms. Valarmathi is the second woman to be the satellite, project director at the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) after T.K.Anuradha, who headed the communication satellite GSAT-12 programme, but she is the first woman to head a remote sensing satellite project.
Tessy Thomas made news for heading the team responsible for India’s first missile that can cross continents with a range of over 5,000 kms. The multifunctional Agni V can be used to direct weapons over vast distances- or even launch a 300 kg satellite in a low earth orbit. This is a game changer missile that gives India the capability to launch nuclear weapons if required. Tessy Thomas, Project Director for Agni IV and a senior scientist behind the launch of Agni V was very happy when Agni IV was test fired successfully on April 19 at the wheeler island, Odisha. She had joined the Defence Institute of Advanced Technology (DIAT)of the Defence Research and Development Organization(DRDO) as a faculty in guided missiles in 1987 with an ME degree in guided missiles. Two of the three Indians who had gone to space were women.
‘Agni’ has its own woman related history. Dr APJ Abdul Kalam started a project in 1983 called Agni to establish its re-entry technology. Agni is a two stage solid propellant re-entry missile with a range of 2000 km. It is called Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile. After take-off it goes to space to an altitude of 500km and travels back to the earth atmosphere. At 85 km altitude, it re-enters the atmosphere with a speed 14 times the speed of the sound and the temperature experienced by the re-entry module is 3500oC. It is very important that the re-entry module must protect its shape and structural integrity even at this condition, for the mission to be accomplished to deliver the payload at the right destination. Only two countries knew this technology when India started dev elopement of Agni. There came Mrs Rohini Devi- a lady scientist and chemical engineer by profession at Defence Research Development Laboratory, Hyderabad(DRDL). In a short span of four years, leading a team of young dedicated scientists she developed this re-entry technology and flew the Agni Mission successfully. This is a remarkable contribution from Rohini Devi for which nation is proud of.
For the development of Akash Missile another woman Prof Bharti Bhatt gets the full credit. In a war theatre, the enemy comes in the form of multiple aircraft simultaneously. So, a system is needed which can destroy multiple targets at the same time. Akash missile system is guided by phased array radar which can track multiple targets and guide multiple missiles towards these targets simultaneously. To achieve such intelligent radar, what is needed is a very important technology called phase shifters. When India started the missile development there was no clue how to make these phased shifters. Prof Bharti Bhat from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi was the only one in the whole of the country knowing what phase shifter is. But she had no experience of developing such a device. When she was approached for the development of phase shifters, she was amazed of daunting task before her. But she took up the challenge and in three years time, she had developed phase shifters and gave the technology to Central Electronics Ltd. for production. The nation is grateful to Bharti Bhat, a woman scientist for accomplishing Agni Missile.
Kiran Muzumdar Shaw an entrepreneurial scientist earned global recognition by her pioneering efforts. Her company Biocon which she founded with a capital of Rs 10000/- in her garage in 1978 is today recognised as India’s pioneering biotech enterprise had a turnover of about Rs 700 crore (in 2006). The initial operation was to extract an enzyme from ‘papaya’. Her application for loans was turned down by banks. Over the years the company grew under her stewardship and is today one of the biggest biopharmaceutical firms in India.
In 2011, for the first time, three Indian women scientists received the prestigious Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar award as compared to a total of only 11 women awardees for all the years since 1958.
Let us not forget the contributions of some of the women scientists (inventors) who worked without any recognition Florence Nightingale the famous nurse was also a brilliant statistician, she was the inventor of pie chart that is being used by many of the businessmen, researchers, throughout the world, Rosalind Elsie Franklin who photographed the DNA double helical structure, Maria Mitchel who discovered a comet and was a source of inspiration to Isaac Asimov, Vanitha Rangaraju who is the only Indian woman to win an Oscar for her technical capability.
Some more notable contributions of women scientists (inventors) are:
*Dr Virginia Apgar a professor of Anaesthesiology at the New York Columbia Presbyterian medical centre devised the Apgar Scale in 1953. The Apgar scale is a simple, easy to perform, standardised scale that is used to determine the physical status of an infant at birth. The Apgar scale is administered to a new born at one minute and five minutes after birth. It scores the baby’s heart rate, respiration, muscle tone, reflex response, and colour. The test quickly indicates the health status of the new born and alerts medical personnel if new born baby needs medical assistance.
*Ms Katherine J.Blodgett, was an American physicist who invented two very important devices related to glass film in 1938. A micro-thin barium stearate film, a kind of coating and a “Color gauge”, another invention to measure the above coating/film.
*Ms. Mary Anderson from USA invented the windshield wiper in 1903. The windshield wiper blade helps to operate cars safely in the rain and allows the car operator to control the external swinging arm wipers from within the car.
*Gertrude Belle Elion a Noble Prize winning Biochemist Wellcome worked for decades along with George Hitchings and Sir James Black with whom she shared the Nobel Prize 1994. She invented many life saving drugs including the drug to fight leukaemia. She is named on 45 patents for drugs.
*Grace M.Hopper, in 1952, invented the computer compiler. She was a mathematician and worked as a naval officer. She and her team developed the user friendly COBOL. (Common Business Oriented Language). She is credited with popularizing the term “debugging” for fixing computer glitches
*Henrietta Hyde, an American invented microelectrode in 1930. It is a small devise that electrically or chemically stimulates a living cell and records the electrical activity within that cell.
An American, Isabella L Karle invented new methods of x-ray crystallography. She was a senior scientist at the naval Research Laboratory. She studied the structure of molecules by first using electron diffraction and then x-ray diffraction techniques. She developed a three dimensional modelling process with the help of which she was able to identify and show the structure of hundreds of complex and important molecules. Because of these new methods the number of published molecular analyses jumped from about `50 to over 10000 per year.
Stephen Lousise Kwolek an American chemist who discovered Poly-paraphenylene terephtalamide better known as Kevlar. Kevlar is a polymer fibre that is five times stronger than the same weight of steel. Kevlar is used in bullet proof vests, helmets tennis rackets and many other commonly used objects.
Rosalyn Sussaman Yallow invented the most successful technique of diagnosing human blood and tissue samples named as the Radioimmunoassay (RIA) along with Dr Solomon A.Berson. Dr Yallow won Nobel Prize in medicine in 1977 for inventing RIA. The radioimmunoassay (RIA) is a method of chemically analyzing human blood and tissue and is used to diagnose diseases. It revolutionised the world of diagnoses because only a tiny sample of blood or tissue is used as a test material.
Elizabeth Lee Hazen and Dr Rachel Brown both women scientists combined their efforts and invented the antibiotic and antifungal drug Nystatin, which was patented in 1957. Both the two scientists donated the royalties over 13 million dollars from their invention to the non-profit of academic scientific study.
The Nobel Prize and Prize in Economic Sciences have been awarded to women 41 times between 1901 and 2010. Only one woman, Marie Curie, has been honored twice, with the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics and the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. This means that 40 women in total have been awarded the Nobel Prize between 1901 and 2010. 16 women have been awarded the Nobel Prize in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine.
An attempt has been made to identify women scientists of India and the world, charting out their exceptional contributions and highlighting their achievements. The cause of concern is why aren’t there more women in science in India?
Women constitute about 50% of human resources and by not utilizing the potential available in the country; we are losing out not only the development of half of the population but also on the total human capital formation that can contribute to the overall development of the nation.
The writer is a former reader Coordinator of University of Jammu.
Follow our WhatsApp channel