On her eighth birthday, when most children might have longed for trinkets or toys, Anna Mani asked her father for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. It was a small gesture that revealed a great deal about her character. Even as a child in a conservative household in a family of the princely state of Travancore, which now forms the southern parts of Kerala, Mani was staking her claim to a life driven by curiosity and intellect.

That choice would echo through her career, for Anna Mani became one of India’s pioneering scientists, a physicist and meteorologist who helped the country achieve self-reliance in measuring its skies, winds, and solar radiation. And yet, despite the brilliance of her work, she slipped almost completely out of public memory.

‘Anna Mani: The Uncut Diamond’ by neuroscienti

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