Janaki Ammal - Meet India’s First Woman PhD in Botany – She Is The Reason Your Sugar Tastes Sweeter!

[Somedude]

 

 

One of the first women scientists to receive the Padma Shri way back in 1977, Edavaleth Kakkat Janaki Ammal lived a life only a handful of other women of her time lived. In an age when most Indian women didn’t make it past high school, Janaki Ammal didn’t just obtain a PhD at one of America’s finest public universities, she went on to make seminal contributions to her field.

She also remains one of the few Asian women to be conferred a honorary doctorate (DSc. honoris causa) by her alma mater, the University of Michigan. And that was in 1931!

Janaki Ammal.

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A pioneering botanist and cytogeneticist, Janaki Ammal is credited with putting sweetness in India’s sugarcane varieties, speaking against the hydro-electric project in Kerala’s Silent Valley and the phenomenal study of chromosomes of thousands of species of flowering plants. There is even a flower named after her, a delicate bloom in pure white called Magnolia Kobus Janaki Ammal.

Yet, at a time when the country is focussing on educating the girl child, Janaki Ammal’s contribution to Indian botanical research remains mostly unknown outside academic circles. This is the story of an extraordinary Indian woman who braved a largely patriarchal, ultra-conservative society to fulfill her academic dreams.

EK Janaki Ammal was born in Tellichery (now Thallassery) in Kerala on November 4, 1897. Her father, Dewan Bahadur EK Krishnan, was a sub-judge in what was then the Madras Presidency. A man with a keen interest in the natural sciences, Janaki’s father would correspond regularly with scholars of the time and maintain descriptive notes about his developing garden. This love for learning and curiosity about the natural world was something he would pass on to his 19 children — six from his first wife, Sharada, and thirteen from the second, Deviammal, the tenth of whom was Janaki Ammal.

 

After completing her schooling in Tellichery, Janaki moved to Madras where she obtained her Bachelor’s degree from Queen Mary’s College and her Honours degree in Botany from the Presidency College in 1921. She was teaching at Women’s Christian College when she got the prestigious Barbour scholarship from the University of Michigan in the US.

Janaki Ammal taught at the Women’s Christian College (above) for a few years.

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Choosing a life of scholarship over marriage (which was being planned to a first cousin), Janaki left for the University of Michigan, where she obtained her Master’s degree in 1925. Returning to India, she continued to teach at the Women’s Christian College, but went to Michigan again to pursue her doctoral thesis. On her return, she became Professor of Botany at the Maharaja’s College of Science in Trivandrum, and she taught there for two years between 1932 and 1934.

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An expert in cytogenetics (the study of chromosomes and inheritance), Janaki next joined the Sugarcane Breeding Station at Coimbatore to work on sugarcane biology. At that time, the sweetest sugarcane in the world was the Saccharum officianarum variety from Papua New Guinea and India imported it from Southeast Asia. In a bid to improve India’s indigenous sugarcane varieties, the Sugarcane Breeding Station had been set up at Coimbatore in the early 1920s.

Sugarcane being harvested in India.

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By manipulating polyploid cells through cross-breeding of hybrids in the laboratory, Janaki was able to create a high yielding strain of the sugarcane that would thrive in Indian conditions. Her research also helped analyse the geographical distribution of sugarcane across India, and to establish that the S. Spontaneum variety of sugarcane had originated in India.

In 1935, the famous scientist and Noble laureate C V Raman founded the Indian Academy of Sciences and selected Janaki as a research fellow in its very first year. However, her status as a single woman from a caste considered backward created irreconcilable problems for Janaki among her male peers at Coimbatore. Facing caste and gender based discrimination, Janaki left for London where she joined the John Innes Horticultural Institute as an assistant cytologist.

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Also Read: 7 Incredibly Smart Indian Women Scientists Who Make Us All Proud

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Janaki was with them from 1940 to 1945, a time when German planes were bombing London. Later, talking about the experience to her friends, the courageous woman described how she would dive under her bed during the night bombings but continue with the research work the next day after brushing the broken glass off the shelves.

Janaki Ammal at John Innes Horticultural Institute.

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Impressed by her work, the Royal Horticulture Society invited Janaki to work as a cytologist at their campus at Wisley, near Kew Gardens, famous for its collection of plants from around the world. It was during her years at Wisley that Janaki met some of the most talented cytologists, geneticists and botanists in the world. In 1945, she co-authored The Chromosome Atlas of Cultivated Plants with biologist CD Darlington, a close friend and mentor for the greater part of her life.

[Somedude]

She is an anglo-indian. One of most famous botanist & cytogeneticist (genetics in plants related) in the world. I heard she has two trees named after her. I came to know about her in StarTalk on March 24, 2022 (Science Pioneers).