Who is Anna Mani and what is she well-known for?

Anna Mani, a famous but underappreciated physicist and meteorologist, will have a Google Doodle for her 104th birthday on August 23. She is one of the most famous physicists in India, and because of her work, we can now accurately predict the weather.

In addition to helping India with weather forecasts, she also helped the country do well with renewable energy. She went to Presidency College, Madras, with famous scientists CV Raman, VL Ethiraj, and CP Ramaswamy Iyer. It’s interesting that all three are from Tamil Nadu.

Anna Mani went against gender norms and succeeded in a field where men were the majority. Because of this, she is seen as a national symbol of women’s empowerment in the country. Here is the story of Anna Mani’s life, which is very interesting.

Who is Anna Mani? – Google Doodle

Anna Mani was born in the Keralan village of Peerumade on August 23, 1918, to a family of Syrian Christians. Anna Mani, who loved to read, made it her life’s work to get India to work on clean energy and weather forecasting.

She reportedly chose a set of Encyclopedia Britannica books over a pair of diamond earrings when she was eight years old.

She got a research scholarship from the Indian Institute of Science and a degree in physics and chemistry from the prestigious Presidency College in Madras (now called Chennai) (IISc). She then moved to London to study physics at Imperial College. Later, she became interested in weather equipment.

Before she moved to London, she worked as a teacher at the Women’s Christian College. Sir CV Raman, who won the Nobel Prize, taught her spectroscopy at IISc. In 1948, she went back to India to make weather tools.

She did what was asked of her and made almost 100 weather instruments for India. Later, she opened a workshop where she made tools for measuring wind speed and solar energy.

What is she known for? (Google Doodle)

Even though her whole life was inspiring, there were a few events that made her famous around the world. Anna was a physicist who believed in Gandhian ideas and wore Khadi clothes. She was not only a successful scientist, but also a patriotic Indian who gave up a comfortable life abroad to work for her country.

She was a supporter of clean energy. In 1950, she set up a network of stations to measure solar radiation and wrote many papers about how to measure renewable energy. Her most important work has been in the area of measuring weather forecasts.

In 1987, when she became Deputy Director General of the Indian Meteorological Department, she was given the K.R. Ramanathan Medal by the Indian National Science Academy (INSA) for her contributions to the country and to science (IMD). She died on August 16, 2001, in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.

Anna Mani’s life was a source of inspiration for a lot of nationalists. She pushed for people to break the law, and she only wore Khadi as a sign of her national identity.

She could have stayed in London and worked there after she finished her studies there. But because she loved India, she went back home. She made a lot of weather instruments as a result, which helped Indian science move forward.