In 1897, a small city called Thalassery in Kerala saw the birth of a baby girl who went on to become a force of nature, almost literally! Edavalath Kakkat Janaki Ammal became the first Indian woman to get a doctorate degree in botany from the University of Michigan in 1931. Interestingly, the University awarded her an honorary LLD or Doctor of Law in 1956. She was best known for her work in sugarcane crops. This has earned her the sobriquet of ‘the woman who sweetened India’s sugarcane’.

Her work
Her involvement with sugarcane and expertise in cytogenetics brought her to the Sugarcane Breeding Station in Coimbatore. She created a high-yield variety of sugarcane that not only helped prove that the variety called Saccharum spontaneum had originated in India but also helped collect data of sugarcane production in India.

Her work at the Royal Horticulture Society, Surrey, England, resulted in:

• Studies on chromosomes of garden plants

• More information on evolution of varieties of flowers

• Data on plant speciation

Dr.Janaki Ammal came back to India in the early 1950s and was appointed as the first Director of the Central Botanical Laboratory, Lucknow. She also helped reorganise the Botanical Survey of India, Kolkata, worked in the Regional Research Laboratory, Jammu, and even worked for a short while at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Trombay.

In 1977, the Government of India conferred the Padma Shri on her. This was another pioneering honour because Dr.Janaki Ammal was the first woman scientist to receive this award.

Her strength
Dr.Janaki Ammal’s life is extraordinary, for sure. Her body of work inspires young botanists even today. Cities like Coimbatore owe their ‘sugarcane heritage’ to the work done by Dr.Janaki Ammal. But there is another side to her story. Imagine the society in which she was born and worked. It was an age when women perhaps did not even go to school. And if they did, they very rarely went beyond high school. And here was Dr.Janaki Ammal who got her honours degree from Presidency College, Chennai and then never looked back.

She was also a single woman. Which in the context of her times, was revolutionary. She faced and dealt with almost constant gender, and caste discrimination, even when she was a research fellow under C V Raman. Her determination to do magnificent work can be seen in a letter she wrote where she says, “I refused to be defeated.” This was in the context of her work in studying a sugarcane variety.

She was also unafraid to take on bigger roles in nation-development. The Silent Valley National Park in Kerala owes its existence to Dr.Janaki Ammal. She rallied for the preservation of this pristine forest when the Government was planning a hydel project that would have flooded a mammoth part of the forest.

Typical of her work, there is extraordinarily little information about Dr.Janaki Ammal’s personal life. But one thing for sure, she prioritised work before self because of a deep conviction that her work will help more people and would keep her memory alive through the ages.

#InterestingInfo

• EK Janaki Ammal planted magnolias in Surrey, UK and they blossom even now!

• There is a yellow rose named E.K. Janaki Ammal