Anna Mani(1918 — 2001)

For her eighth birthday, little Anna refuses the traditional gift given to the girls in her family: a pair of diamond earrings. Instead, she asks for a complete set of the Encyclopædia Britannica. An insatiable reader from a very young age, she is said to have read nearly every Malayalam book in her town's library before the age of eight, and the English-language works before she turned twelve.

A brilliant physics student, Anna Mani works in Bangalore in the laboratory of Nobel laureate C. V. Raman, where she studies the optical properties of diamonds and rubies. She publishes five scientific papers and writes her doctoral thesis, but the university denies her the title of doctor because she did not hold an official master's degree.

Rather than importing costly equipment from abroad, Anna Mani decides that an independent India must manufacture its own meteorological instruments. She oversees the standardization of around a hundred devices — anemometers, radiation sensors, probes — thereby building the scientific self-reliance of her young country.

A recognized specialist in solar radiation, she sets up a network of stations across India that measure the Sun's energy received at ground level. These data, compiled in her reference handbooks, are still used today to study the climate and solar energy of the subcontinent.

Shaped by the independence movement and by Gandhi, Anna Mani wore khadi, the hand-spun and hand-woven cotton that became the symbol of the struggle against British rule. Throughout her life, she remained known for her simplicity, her rigor, and her refusal of the conventions imposed on women.