Anna Mani: Google doodle honors Indian physicist & meteorologist on her 104th birthday

Happy 104th birthday, Anna Mani!

Today Google doodle celebrates the 104th birthday of Anna Mani (Anna Modayil Mani), the Indian physicist and meteorologist. She is also known as one of the country’s first female scientists. Mani made contributions to the field of meteorological instrumentation, conducted research, and published numerous papers on solar radiation, ozone, and wind energy measurements.

Anna Mani’s life’s work and research made it possible for India to make accurate weather forecasts and laid the groundwork for the nation to harness renewable energy.

Anna Mani was born in 1918 at Peermade, Kerala to a Syrian Christian family. Her father was a civil engineer and an agnostic. She was the seventh child of eight children in her family and a voracious reader. Impressed by Gandhi during Vaikom Satyagraha and inspired by his nationalist movement, she took to wearing only khadi garments.

Anna Mani loves to read books. By age 12, Mani had read almost every book at her public library! On her eighth birthday, she declined to accept her family's customary gift of a set of diamond earrings, asking instead for a set of Encyclopædia Britannica. The world of books opened her to new ideas and imbued her with a deep sense of social justice which informed and shaped her life. She remained an avid reader all her life.

Mani wanted to pursue dancing, but she decided in favor of physics because she liked the subject. After high school, she completed her Intermediate Science course at Women’s Christian College (WCC) and went on to complete a Bachelor of Science with honors in physics and chemistry from Presidency College, Madras. After graduation, she taught at WCC for a year and won a scholarship for post-graduate studies at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. Here, under the guidance of Nobel Laureate Sir C. V. Raman, she studied spectroscopy, specializing in diamonds and rubies.

Between 1942 and 1945, Anna Mani published five papers, completed her Ph.D. dissertation, and began a graduate program at Imperial College, London, where she learned to specialize in meteorological instrumentation.

Anna Mani began working for the India Meteorological Department upon her return to India in 1948, where she helped the country design and manufacture its own weather instruments. She excelled so much in this male-dominated field that by 1953, she became head of the division. Under her leadership, more than 100 weather instrument designs were simplified and standardized for production.

Mani was also an early advocate of alternative energy sources. Throughout the 1950s, she established a network of solar radiation monitoring stations and published several papers on sustainable energy measurement.

Mani later became Deputy Director General of India Meteorological Department and held several key positions in the United Nations World Meteorological Organization. In 1987, she won the INSA K. R. Ramanathan Medal for her remarkable contributions to science.

After her retirement, she was appointed as a Trustee of the Raman Research Institute in Bangalore. She also founded a company that manufactured solar and wind energy devices.

Thank you, Anna Mani! Your life’s work inspired brighter days for this world.

Source: Google doodles, Wikipedia

Also Read: Cláudia Celeste: Google doodle on first Brazilian transgender actress!