PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Savithri Preetha Nair received her doctorate in 2003, from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, for her dissertation on the museum and the shaping of the sciences in colonial India. Nair’s research interests include history of science, modernity and enlightenment at the turn of the nineteenth century, history and politics of collecting for science, sociology of knowledge, the public museum and women in science in colonial and post-colonial India. Among her publications is the co-authored (with Richard Axelby) Science and the Changing Environment in India: A Guide to Sources in the India Office Records 1780–1920 (British Library, London, 2010), and the monograph, Raja Serfoji II: Science, Medicine and Enlightenment in Tanjore, 1786–1832 (Routledge, 2012), besides several papers in peer-reviewed international journals and edited volumes. Nair is an independent scholar and divides her time between London and Kerala.
“Janaki Ammal’s was an exemplary life, and she has been lucky in her biographer. Historian of science, Savithri Preetha Nair, matches her subject’s zest and energy, following her traces in far-flung archives in the United States, the United Kingdom and India. She closely tracks Janaki Ammal’s relations with her scientific peers, and with her extended family (to whom she was very close). Her scientific research and achievements are narrated expertly, in language accessible to a lay audience but with no sacrifice as regards complexity and nuance. When published, this will be the best biography of an Indian scientist written thus far. In the authoritativeness of its research, and the sensitivity of its treatment, it far outdoes the existing biographies of male scientific icons such as C. V. Raman, Homi Bhabha, and Meghnad Saha.” — Ramachandra Guha in The Telegraph “Savithri Preetha Nair's labour of love is truly inspiring, from the perspective of both biography-writing and writing history of science.” — Deepak Kumar, Historian of Science “It is the definitive biography of an Indian woman botanist who made many notable contributions but who never received her due in her long career. With extensive archival and other research, Savithri Preetha Nair recreates, for the first time, the life and times of the pioneering E. K. Janaki Ammal and of her contemporaries. This is also a very fine contribution to the history of science in India in the twentieth century.” — Jairam Ramesh, MP, former Union Minister, and author
