First, I want to ask you about your introduction to Anna Mani and why you decided to write this book.

I had not heard of Anna Mani until Abha Sur, who works at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), wrote a piece about her in Meridians, published in the late 1990s or early 2000s. I moved to Thiruvananthapuram around the same period, and Anna had already moved here. She was very unwell and Anna’s sister, who was looking after her, knew my mother, so there was communication between the two. I knew that there was this scientist who was here, but I did not know anything more.

I was working with the Alliance Française here, and we were doing some science communication workshops. In one of them, on women in science, I asked the young children, “Can you name a woman in science?” There was just silence. And then one hand went up and said, “Marie Curie.”

I thought, “Yes, there is a problem here and one needs to solve that problem. Maybe I’ll write a book.” It took me a long time, but that is how I got into it.

Asha Gopinathan is a researcher and writer based in Thiruvananthapuram. | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement

Your book does a tremendous job of conveying the breadth of Anna’s contributions to meteorology, to space science, and how her work so firmly put India on the global map. Can you summarise what you think is the legacy that Anna leaves behind? Or maybe I should say left behind because it seems that since Anna passed away in the early 2000s, meteorology in India has shifted focus.

That’s a hard question to answer, because I don’t know whether there was any one contribution that was more notable than the other. Anna actually did her PhD work with C.V. Raman, and she worked on using Raman spectroscopy to study the luminescence of diamonds and rubies. This move to meteorology was purely by accident, because the only post-doctoral fellowship that was available was in meteorological instrumentation in the UK.

She took it thinking that this would make a contribution to the country. This was 1945, before India became independent. All students of Indian science really wanted India to become independent, and they wanted to contribute in some way.

She was trained, and then she got a job at the IMD in Pune. From then—and it’s not just Anna, it was her mentor also, S.P. Venkiteshwaran, who started working there much before her—they began laying the foundation of the workshops there, which were absolutely wonderful. Private sector companies from Bombay would come and use their workshops.

In India until then, all instrumentation was imported from Britain, and all their little workshop did was repair things. When Anna came in, she started redoing everything. She says somewhere that it was only after coming to India—even though she got trained in the best places in the UK—that she really learnt what it meant to work at the ground. They initially started by copying designs, then they modified those designs, and finally they just broke off and started making their own things.

And she wasn’t just a maker of instruments, she was also a physicist using these to study physics. People often undermine her contributions by saying, “Here was this weather woman of India,” but she was studying atmospheric physics, she was using radar to study certain aspects of the atmosphere in Pune. Her contribution to the study of ozone is so immense that she got the first K.R. Ramanathan Memorial Medal for that.

It was her student and junior colleague, Sreedharan, who finally made the ozonesonde that nobody else could make, to study atmospheric ozone. Her contributions are immense. Then after retirement, she went on to work in wind energy and solar energy in a big way, including making instruments for that in Bangalore.

I can’t pin down and say, “This is Anna’s legacy.” But one thing I can say is that for her and for her generation, wanting to do science was wanting to do something more for the country. For instance, there was an airline crash in Delhi, and she wanted to do something there. The next time, the instrumentation would be improved so that there wouldn’t be another crash. Now, how many scientists do we know today who would do that? Who would get out of the lab and take action unless it falls under their project guidelines?

You make note in the book about how focus in Indian meteorology today is no longer on in-house, home-made instruments, but we seem a lot more comfortable using instruments from outside. Can you tell me your reading of how things have changed today?

Wherever I went to see instruments at various labs, I saw that they were Korean or Japanese or German or Chinese instruments. And this really surprised me because the emphasis has been on “make your own” and “fly your own” and even “sell your own”. They were even selling ozonesondes to other countries. There’s so much talk about Make in India and Start-up India.

I actually checked this with one of Anna’s former colleagues, Dr G.P. Srivastava, who said that this is because the structure of IMD has changed. It is now more like a CSIR institution with scientists who are graded from B to G. And promotions happen because they publish a lot of papers, or attend conferences or whatever, just like other institutions. Nobody has the time to spend one or two years making an instrument and perfecting it, maybe getting one paper out of it.

Anna Mani in Tübingen, Germany, in 1965. | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement

You write in your introduction that our country has a very poor tradition of archiving, especially when it comes to women in science. Can you elaborate on why it was so hard for you as a biographer to find out more about this aspect of the book?

When I started off, all I had was her scientific papers and two interviews. And, because I am not a “trained biographer”, I did not initially know where to look. So I went to Raman Research Institute, which really helped me a lot; there were a lot of papers there, but it is not an archive, so to speak. They will go through big cardboard boxes and suddenly they will come out with something and ask me whether I wanted it. And of course I wanted it.

I also visited Anna’s flat in Bangalore, where many of her letters are. That is when I started getting all this information, the letters started coming, falling into place, and then I think the book started getting a more human quality to it. These details interest many readers, not just scientists. I edited these parts into different chapters. That way, even readers who felt tired of the science could enjoy other parts of the book.

Anna Mani: The Uncut Diamond brings together science, letters, and history to show Anna Mani as both a researcher and a person. | Photo Credit: National Book Trust

One of the most poignant and telling chapters of your book was the one that you chose to tell through the voice of Anna herself. This is the series of letters that she had written to G.P. Srivastava. How did you stumble upon these letters and what did they add to your own understanding of Anna?

Dr. G.P. Srivastava was a colleague, a junior colleague. And I stumbled upon these letters because the Raman Research Institute stumbled upon it and asked me whether I wanted it.

And when I started reading it, it was such an eye-opener. I said, “Boy, this has made it. This will make the book. The book will click because of this.” Those letters span the sixties, all the way up to the nineties. They tell me about a woman who was very observant about what was going on around her at that period, very meticulous about how her department was running even when she was not there. And she got regular reports from them. And those days they couldn’t send emails or WhatsApp or anything. They were just writing letters to each other. For a biographer, this is good because you get these letters, whereas I don’t know what any contemporary biographer would do with email and WhatsApp.

She wrote about her travels, about places like Leningrad, and how well they were treated there. She wrote about Egypt, where colleagues helped her find a place to stay. She also wrote about small, everyday things. In one letter, she jokes about a maid who cleaned her house so well that not even a bit of soap was left. She had to go out and buy everything again.

These small details make her feel very human. Many people I met said Anna Mani was terrifying as a boss. But her letters and the people who knew her well gave me a different picture. One colleague said she was strict with people who did not work properly or missed deadlines, but she was caring towards others.

For example, when she went to Delhi, she would not allow workers from Pune to come during winter because they did not have warm clothes. There is also the story of C. Radhakrishnan, a Malayalam writer who worked at an IMD centre in Kodaikanal. His colleagues did not like that he was writing books, so he was sent to Pune, where “The Tigress” Anna Mani was. She read his books, supported him, and wrote on his file that he should be allowed to continue writing. Later, she even helped get his book translated into English. They stayed in touch until the end of her life.

Anna Mani. | Photo Credit: The Hindu Archives

That reminds me of her letters where she admitted feeling bad after being hard on someone. You do not often see that in people in power.

How did you decide how deeply to go into the science in the book?

At first, all I had were her papers, so I read all of them and took detailed notes. I grouped related papers and wrote chapters around themes like ozone and radiation. I did worry that too much science might put readers off. After writing five chapters, I gave them to five young readers and asked for feedback. One of them was a class twelve student, and his father also tried to read it. The father said it would be hard for anyone without a science background. Others said the many instruments were confusing.

I rewrote large parts of the book. By then, I had also found more personal stories about her life, which helped balance the science. I added these stories where they felt relevant. Only after the first reviews came out—and they were written by journalists, not scientists—and they were positive, did I feel that something had worked.

I believe you cannot write about a scientist without including the science. Many biographies remove all the science, but that did not feel right to me. I am grateful that the publisher did not remove those parts.

One quote by Anna Mani that stayed with me is from Abha Sur’s book. She said “What is this hoopla about women in science?” and said it was not difficult in her time. This is striking because she clearly faced gender barriers. How do you understand this statement?

I never met Anna Mani, but I feel she had a way of ignoring many problems and focusing on her work. She did face gender issues, even during her doctoral years, but these issues were not talked about openly then. The language and ideas around gender became common only after 1975. During Anna’s working life, the focus was more on nationalism.

The facts show that while Anna rose very high in IMD, other women stayed in lower roles. The maximum they went up to was the senior observer level. She must have noticed this. Later in life, after speaking to Abha Sur, she did reflect on this and wondered if she could have done more. She also had women friends who were scientists and doing well, which may have shaped her view. That could be why she did not see what was happening at lower levels.

Anna Mani with C.V. Raman | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement

Anna was refused a PhD despite doing all the work that would go towards one whilst she was working in C.V. Raman’s lab at the Indian Institute of Science. You argue that the Indian Institute of Science must correct this and award her and Sunanda Bai a posthumous PhD. Why do you think this matters, and do you think it could actually happen?

Both Sunanda Bai and Anna Mani did all the work that was required for their theses. Sunanda Bai published 10 single-author papers, all in the Raman Research Institute journals which had just been started by Raman and where all his students published. Anna published six, of which one is on rubies and the rest—five papers—are on diamonds.

I have visited the library at the Indian Institute of Science, and Anna’s work on rubies is submitted as a master’s thesis, and her work on diamonds is submitted as a PhD thesis. Sunanda Bai’s work is submitted entirely as her PhD thesis. She already had a master’s from Banaras Hindu University.

The argument that is made is that Anna didn’t have a master’s. Now, she did have a B.Sc. Honours degree, which was meant for very high-level students. The way that it was structured was that they were given a titular master’s within two years of receiving this B.Sc. degree. K.R. Ramanathan got it. The question remains: why didn’t Madras University give Anna that degree? Number two: she had already submitted her work on rubies for her Master’s to the university. Why was that not enough?

Here were two women who worked in Raman’s lab, and Sunanda Bai he supervised himself. So why did he not remove these obstacles? He could have done that quite easily because he was one of the most powerful physicists in the whole world. He didn’t do that.

The absence of a PhD did not affect her career, and I think that has to do with the fact that it was that period. If this had happened today, you couldn’t continue in your career after that, because some clerk sitting in some office will say, “No PhD? Finished.” It also had to do with the fact that she did come out of Raman’s lab and she had all these publications; so she got a post-doc, and then life moved on. Also, many of the people who came into IMD in those days didn’t have PhDs. They came in, they worked, and then Anna insisted that they get their PhDs. Dr. Sreedharan got his PhD for making the ozonesonde. Dr. G.P. Srivastava did lots of work, and she insisted that he should submit it and get his PhD.

I feel it is important to correct a wrong. This is a wrong. Raman was very impressed with the work that Anna had done in his lab. And he was very impressed with the work she was doing after leaving his lab also.

There is historical precedent as well. It has been done before in England, where these women went to study medicine, I think in the 1870s or later in Scotland. They were not even allowed to go into classes in those days, and they were never awarded their degrees. Finally, 150 years later, they were given their degrees as a mark of atonement.

I think something similar should happen here. Indian Institute of Science would be sending out this message, saying that they are willing to be open about correcting a wrong.

We are out of time, and we don’t want to extend this too much, but your answers will hopefully encourage listeners to give themselves a chance to get acquainted with this thoroughly fascinating figure.

Thank you so much. We have created a website that goes along with the book, which gives you much more information than what we could put in the book. So I suggest that those who buy the book also take a look at the website.