Rajeshwari Chatterjee(1922 — 2010)
Rajeshwari Chatterjee
Inde, Raj britannique, Union indienne
5 min read
Rajeshwari Chatterjee was an Indian engineer and scientist, a pioneer of microwave and antenna engineering. The first woman engineer from the state of Karnataka, she taught for decades at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore.
Frequently asked questions
Key Facts
- Born in 1922 in Bangalore, in British India
- Earned a doctorate in engineering from the University of Michigan in the United States in 1953
- First woman engineer from the state of Karnataka and the first woman professor of engineering at the Indian Institute of Science
- A specialist in microwave and antenna engineering, author of numerous research works
- Died in 2010 in Bangalore
Works & Achievements
A thesis completed in the United States that made her one of the first Indian women to earn a doctorate in electrical engineering.
Together with her husband, she equipped and organized one of India's first microwave engineering laboratories.
Pioneering work that trained dozens of researchers and contributed to the development of telecommunications in India.
Technical books co-authored with S. K. Chatterjee that became standard references in Indian higher education.
Texts written after her retirement to pass on the memory of her reformist grandmother and the education of women.
Anecdotes
Rajeshwari Chatterjee was raised largely by her grandmother Kamalamma Dasappa, a social reformer who, widowed at a very young age, had defied convention to educate herself and campaign for women's education. This family example instilled in her early on the conviction that an Indian girl could aim for the highest levels of scientific study.
A brilliant student, she earned a scholarship from the newly independent Indian government in the late 1940s to study in the United States. At the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, she obtained a master's degree and then a doctorate in electrical engineering — a path that was exceptional at the time for a woman from India.
When she returned to the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore in 1953, there was no microwave laboratory. Together with her husband Sisir Kumar Chatterjee, also an engineer, she had to build almost from scratch the equipment and test benches that would train generations of Indian engineers.
She was the first woman appointed as a faculty member in the Electrical Communication Engineering department at the IISc, where she worked for nearly four decades, supervising dozens of theses on antennas and wave propagation.
Often described as the first woman engineer of the state of Karnataka, she continued to write after her retirement, notably to preserve the memory of her grandmother and the history of the pioneering women of her region.
Primary Sources
A technical work based on their research at the Indian Institute of Science, intended to train Indian students in microwave engineering and waveguides.
Her research focused on the design and radiation of antennas, a field she helped teach and develop in India.
After retiring, she wrote texts devoted to her family, and in particular to her reformist grandmother, reflecting the role that women's education played in her own journey.
Key Places
City in southern India where she was born and spent most of her life. The country's future technology capital.
Prestigious institute where she studied, then taught and built the microwave laboratory for nearly forty years.
American university where she earned her master's degree and then her doctorate in electrical engineering thanks to a scholarship.
