WOMEN SCIENTISTS IN INDIA: LIVES, STRUGGLES & ACHIEVEMENTS

摘要

The book 'Women scientists in India: Lives, Struggles & Achievements' is a compendium of biographies, albeit brief, of distinguished women scientists spanning the period of mid nineteenth century to mid twentieth century. The earliest born scientist named in the book is Anna Sarah Kugler (b. 1833) and the latest one is Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay (b. 1968). A similar book titled Lilavati's Daughters: Women Scientists of India had been released a few years ago, edited by Rohini Godbole and Ram Ramaswamy, and published by the Indian Academy of Sciences, which featured about 60 women scientists. The book that we are discussing here has been published in 2018 which covers the biography of 175 women scientists. Of these 175, names of 40 scientists are common to both the books. This clearly shows that one can not deny the influence of subjectivity of the author and editors in choosing the subjects of their books. While 'Lilavati's Daughters' is a collection of articles written by different persons, this book is authored solely by Dr. Anjana Chattopadhyay, and hence the style and formatting are more uniform.