Category Career Queries

Born on March 31, 1865, in Kalyan, India, Anandi Gopal Joshi was the first Indian female physician. She was the first woman from the then Bombay presidency to study and graduate with a degree in western medicine in the U.S.. She graduated from the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1886. Joshi was inspired to become a physician following the death of her child just ten days after birth due to lack of medical care.

At a time when women’s role was confined to the kitchen, Joshi, supported by her husband, stood up to pursue higher education and inspired several women in the country to do so.

“Be grateful for challenges because… Had there been no difficulties and no thorns in the way, then (each woman and) man would have been in his primitive state and no progress made in civilisation and mental culture.”

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Born on March 6, 1937, in Bolshoye Maslennikovo, a village on the Volga River in western Russia, Tereshkova was the first and youngest woman to have flown into space. She achieved this feat on June 16, 1963, when she made the first solo mission to space aboard the Vostok 6 spacecraft. Tereshkova spent almost three days in space and orbited the Earth 48 times in her 70.8 hour-long flight. Till date, Tereshkova remains the only woman in the world to have flown on a solo mission.

She paved the way for women to become astronauts, with 64 women having flown successfully to space after her.

“Once you’ve been in space, you appreciate how small and fragile the Earth is.”

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Born in Warsaw, Poland on November 7, 1867 as Maria Sklodowska, Marie Curie was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize, and the only woman in history to win it twice. Curie was also the first person to be awarded the Nobel Prize in two different scientific fields. Curie won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 for her contribution to the research on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel. She along with her husband Pierre Curie shared the award with Becquerel. In 1911, she won the Nobel Prize in won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her discovery of the elements polonium and radium.

Marie’s work paved the way for future research into radiation, which today plays a big role in treating cancer patients around the world.

“I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy.”

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Born on December 10, 1815, in London, England, Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, is widely regarded as the first computer programmer. Lovelace worked closely with Charles Babbage, (credited with inventing the first mechanical computer), on his mechanical computer, the Analytical Engine. She recognised the potential of the machine to have applications beyond just calculations and published an algorithm intended to be carried out by it. As a result, she is considered the first computer programmer.

Lovelace paved the way for computer programmers of the future, who are now programming the computer to learn by itself, a process known as machine learning.

“That brain of mine is something more than merely mortal, as time will show.”

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Durga Puja might be over but celebrations aren’t over in the the city of joy – Kolkata. The city celebrated its sixth Nobel Laureate with Abhijit Banerjee being awarded the prestigious award for his contribution to economics.
In fact, one of the most prestigious universities of the city – Presidency College has in itself brought out two Nobel Laureates including Banerjee.
Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and fellow economist Michael Kremer, won the Nobel Prize for Economics. A native of Kolkata, Banerjee, who happens to be married to Duflo, did his schooling and college here in the city.

The son of two economics professors, Nirmala Banerjee and Dipak Banerjee, he studied at South Point school and then attended Presidency College (now Presidency University). He completed his Masters from Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

The students of South Point and Presidency University are understandably ecstatic and have been celebrating the achievement of their alumnus. Meanwhile, congratulatory messages continue to flood the Banerjee household in Kolkata.

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On February 2, 1835, British politician Thomas Babington Macaulay circulated Minute on Education, a treatise that offered definitive reasons for why the East India Company and the British government should spend money on the provision of English language education, as well as the promotion of European learning, especially the sciences, in India.

While The Minute acknowledged the historic role of Sanskrit and Arabic literature in the Subcontinent, it also contended that they had limitations. “A single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia,” Macaulay wrote in the Minute.

A month after its circulation, the Minute became policy, when William Bentinck, the governor general of India, signed the resolution. For Macaulay, this was a victory. He had won against his detractors, especially the Orientalists – East India Company officials, scholars, translators and collectors – who supported study and instruction in India in Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian languages.

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