This Day in History

 

Today's Google Doodle brings our attention to Anna Mani, Indian physicist and meteorologist.

She would have been 104 today.

She earned a Bachelor of Science with honors in Physics and Chemistry.  At the age of 22, she received a scholarship from the Indian Institute of Science.  Although she completed five research papers and a dissertation, they wouldn't give her a PhD without a Master's degree, so she obtained another scholarship to attend the Imperial College of London.  There she specialized in meteorological instruments, their calibration and standardization.

In 1948, she returned to India and joined the Meteorological Department.  She wanted to make India self-sufficient by designing and manufacturing its own weather instruments.  She constructed rain gauges, hydrographs, thermographs, barographs, barometers, anemographs, etc.  She was most interested in solar energy and set up a network of stations to measure solar radiation.  

She retired in 1976 but continued to hold positions within the World Meteorological Organization, the Commission for Instruments and Methods of Observation, as well as the International Ozone Commission. 

In the photo above, she's holding a radiosonde, a weather-measuring atmospheric sensor.

Her advice to young scientists: "We have only one life.  First equip yourself for the job, make full use of your talents and then love and enjoy the work, making the most of being out of doors and in contact with nature."