Clay, Craft, Music and Science: Purnima Sinha's Life

摘要

Dr. Purnima Sinha (12 October 1927 - 11 July 2015) was a Physicist and was well known as the first woman to receive a doctorate degree in Physics from the University of Calcutta. She was born in Kolkata as the youngest daughter of Dr. Naresh Chandra Sen-Gupta, who was a constitutional lawyer and a politically conscious person. Dr. Sen-Gupta was President of the Workers and Peasants Party and the Labour Party of India. He also authored about sixty novels and dramas. Purnima Sen-Gupta had her early education at Lake School for Girls, followed by Asutosh College and Scottish Church College. She enrolled at the Department of Physics of University of Calcutta at Rajabazar Science College for her Postgraduate degree. In 1951 Purnima Sen-Gupta started her doctoral work under the supervision of the renowned physicist Satyandra Nath Bose, who was the Khaira Professor and in charge of the X-ray Laboratory at the University of Calcutta at the time. The unwritten rule of Prof. Bose was that each of his research students would fabricate his or her own instrument according to individual need. To quote Purnima Sen-Gupta herself, "The high voltage transformer used for our X-ray equipment was fabricated in the Applied Physics Department of our university. We had put together our X-ray equipment from the World War Ⅱ surplus gathered in the lane behind Dr. Roy's house. The rest of the parts were put together at the workshop in our department." She studied about fifty clay samples and classified them into different categories viz. Kaolinite, Montmorillonite, Illite and Vermiculite. In 1954 her work on Indian Montmorillonites was published in the journal "Nature". She was awarded D.Phil, degree in Physics from Calcutta University in 1956.