Janaki Ammal

EK Janaki Ammal ( Edavalath Kakkat Janaki Ammal ; Malayalam ഇ.കെ. ജാനകി അമ്മാൾ ; born November 4, 1897 in Tellicherry , Madras , British India ; † February 7, 1984 in Madras , Tamil Nadu ) was an Indian botanist who did scientific research in cytogenetics and plant geography . Her main work involves studying sugar cane and eggplant . She has collected various plants of medicinal and economic value from the rainforests of what is now Kerala .

youth

Janaki was born in Tellicherry in British India in 1897. Her father was Dewan Bahadur Edavalath Kakkat Krishnan, a junior judge in the Madras Presidency . Her mother, Devi (1864-1941), was the illegitimate daughter of John Child Hannyngton and Kunchi Kurumbi. She had six brothers and five sisters. Girls in their family were encouraged to pursue intellectual goals and the fine arts, but Ammal chose to study botany . After attending school in Tellicherry, she moved to Madras , where she earned a bachelor's degree from Queen Mary's College and, in 1921, a degree in botany from Presidency College . Under the influence of her faculty at Presidency College, Janaki Ammal developed a passion for cytogenetics.

Career

Janaki taught at Women's Christian College, Madras, with a temporary Barbour Fellowship at the University of Michigan , USA, where she earned a Masters degree in 1925. After returning to India, she continued teaching at Women's Christian College. She went back to Michigan as the first Asian Barbour Fellow and received a doctorate in science in 1931.

Janaki is named one of the Indo-Americans of the Century by S. Gopikrishna and Vandana Kumar in an article in India Currents on January 1, 2000.

At a time when most women got no further than high school, it was noteworthy that an Indian woman earned a doctorate in one of America's public universities and made groundbreaking contributions to her field of research. Born in South India, Ammal was arguably the first woman to earn a PhD in botany in the United States (1931) and remains one of the few Asian women to be awarded a PhD degree (honoris causa) from her alma mater, the University of Michigan got. During her time in Ann Arbor, she lived in the Martha Cook Building, a female-only dorm, and worked with Harley Harris Bartlett, professor at the Department of Botany. She developed a cross called "Janaki Brengal", where "Brengal" is an Anglicised spelling of the Hindi word for eggplant ( brinjal ). Her PhD thesis entitled Chromosome Studies in Nicandra Physaloides was published in 1931.

After completing her doctorate, Janaki returned to India to take a position as professor of botany at Maharaja's College of Science in Trivandrum , where she taught from 1932 to 1934. From 1934 to 1939 she worked as a geneticist at the Sugarcane Breeding Institute. in Coimbatore together with Alfred Barber. Her work during these years comprised the cytogenetic analysis of various sugar cane species and of cross genera.

From 1940 to 1945 Janaki Ammal worked as an assistant cytologist at the John Innes Horticultural Institution in London and as a cytologist at the Royal Horticultural Society in Wisley from 1945 to 1954. During this time she published work on chromosome numbers in species such as Sclerostachya fusca . She is best known for co-authoring the monumental Chromosome Atlas of Cultivated Plants with Cyril Dean Darlington . Ammal also published chromosome counts for rhododendron species and Guernsey lilies ( Nerine ).

In 1951, she accepted an invitation from Jawaharlal Nehru and returned to India to reorganize the Botanical Survey of India (BSI). On October 14, 1952, she was appointed Officer on Special Duty at the BSI. She also worked as Director General of the BSI.

Janaki Ammal then served in the Government of India in various capacities, including directing the Central Botanical Laboratory in Allahabad and serving as an officer with special duties at the Regional Research Laboratory in Jammu . She worked for a short time at the Bhabha Atomic Research Center in Trombay before settling in Madras at the Center for Advanced Study in Botany at the University of Madras in November 1970 as a scientist emeritus .

With the beginning of her retirement, Janaki Ammal continued her research, devoting her attention to cytology, but also to genetics, evolution, phytogeography and ethnobotany . In the field laboratory of the Center of Advanced Study, where she lived and worked, she developed a garden with medicinal plants.

Janaki Ammal lived and worked in the field laboratory of the Center for Advanced Study in Botany in Maduravoyal near Madras until her death in February 1984. Her obituary says that "she was devoted to her studies and research until the end of her life." Her obituary also contained appropriately selected lines from the Rig Veda , which highlight Janaki Ammal's predilection for plants: "The sun receive thine eye, the wind thy spirit; go as thy merit is, to earth or heaven. Go, if it be thy lot , unto water; go make thine house in plants with all thy members. "

research

During her time as a geneticist at the Sugarcane Breeding Institute in Coimbato , her work included the cytogenetic analysis of a sugar cane species, Saccharum spontaneum , as well as the breeding of several intergeneric crosses such as Saccharum x maize and Saccharum x millet . Ammal also researched the cytogenetics of sugar cane ( Saccharum officinarum ) and inter- species and inter- species hybrids from sugar cane and related grass species and genera such as bamboo ( Bambusa ). The work on sugar cane can be described as groundbreaking.

During the years 1930–1950, which she spent in England, she carried out chromosome studies on a large number of garden plants. Her research on chromosome numbers and ploidy shed illuminating light on the evolution of species and variants in many cases. The Chromosome Atlas of Cultivated Plants , which she co-wrote with CD Darlington in 1945, was a compilation that included much of her own work on many species.

Janaki Ammal also worked on species such as nightshade ( Solanum ), thorn apples ( Datura ), mint ( Mentha ), lemongrass ( Cymbopogon ) and yams ( Dioscorea ) in addition to medicinal and other plants. She attributed polyploidy to the higher speciation in the cold and humid northeast of the Himalayas compared to the cold and dry northwest of the Himalayas . In addition, according to their findings, the confluence of Chinese and Malaysian elements in the flora of northwest India led to natural hybridization between these elements and the native flora in the region, which led to further plant diversity.

Honors

EK Janaki Ammal was elected a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences in 1935 and a Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy in 1957. The University of Michigan awarded her an honorary doctorate in law in 1956 . The Government of India awarded her the Padma Shri Award in 1977 .

The Ministry of Environment and Forestry of the Government of India established the National Award of Taxonomy on their behalf in 2000 . The Janaki Ammal National Award for Taxonomy is designed to promote excellence in taxonomy and encourage young students and researchers to work in this field. Researchers can be considered for two awards for outstanding work in botanical and zoological taxonomy (including work on microorganisms ), either the EK Janaki Ammal National Award on Plant Taxonomy or the EK Janaki Ammal National Award on Animal Taxonomy.

literature

• S Kedharnath: Edavaleth Kakkat Janaki Ammal (1897-1984) . In: Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Indian National Science Academy 13 (1988), pp. 90-101.
• P Maheshwari, RN Kapil: Fifty Years of Science in India. Progress of Botany . Indian Science Congress Association, Calcutta 1963, pp. 110, 118.
• Vinita Damodaran: "Janaki Ammal, CD Darlington and JBS Haldane: Scientific Encounters at the End of Empire". In: Journal of Genetics , 96 (5), 2007, pp. 827-836. doi : 10.1007 / s12041-017-0844-1
• Vinita Damoradan: Gender, Race and Science in Twentieth-Century India: EK Janaki Ammal and the History of Science . In: Hist. Sci. , li (2013), September 1, 2013, Vol. 51, Issue 3, 2013, pp. 283–307.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l} C V Subramanian: Edavaleth Kakkat Janaki Ammal - IAS Women in Science . Indian Academy of Sciences. Retrieved February 6, 2018.
2. ^ Vinita Damodaran: Gender, Race and Science in Twentieth-Century India: EK Janaki Ammal and the History of Science . In: History of Science . 51, No. 3, 2013, p. 283. doi : 10.1177 / 007327531305100302 .
3. ^ The Michigan Alumnus , Volume 42, UM libraries 1935, p. 532.
4. ↑ EK Janaki Ammal: A polyploid egg plant, Solanum melongena L . In: Papers of Michigan Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters , 15:81.
5. ^ EK Janaki Ammal: Polyploidy in Solanum Melongena Linn . In: CYTOLOGIA, Vol. 5 (1933-1934) No. 4, pp. 453-459.
6. ^ EK Janaki-Ammal: Chromosome Studies in Nicandra Physaloïdes . A. Uystpruyst, 1931.
7. ↑ EK Janaki Ammal: Chromosome Numbers in Sclerostachya fusca . In: Nature 145 (1940), p. 464.
8. ↑ CD Darlington, EK Janaki Ammal: Chromosome atlas of cultivated plants . G. Allen & Unwin Ltd, London 1945.
9. ↑ E. Janaki Ammal, I. Enoch, M. Bridgwater: Chromosome numbers in species of Rhododendron . In: The Rhododendron Yearbook . Royal Horticultural Society 1950, pp. 78-91.
10. ^ E. Janaki Ammal, I. Enoch, M. Bridgwater: Chromosome numbers in hybrid nerines . In: J. Royal Horticultural Society 1951, p. 76.
11. ^ Brief History of the Botanical Survey of India . Botanical Survey of India. Archived from the original on February 22, 2014. Retrieved on August 10, 2013.
12. ↑ Vice-President to open Inter-University Center for Biosciences . In: The Hindu , July 2, 2010. Retrieved February 18, 2018. 
13. ↑ Janaki Ammal, EK: Cytogenetic analysis of Saccharum spontaneum LI chromosome studies in some Indian forms . In: J. agric. Sci (1936).
14. ↑ Ammal, EK: A Saccharum-Zea Cross . In: Nature 142 (1938), pp. 618-619.
15. ↑ Janaki Ammal, EK, and Singh, TSN: A Preliminary Note on a New Saccharum times Sorghum Hybrid . In: Ind. J. Agric. Sci. , 6 (1936), pp. 1105-1106.
16. ↑ Janaki Ammal, EK: Chromosome Numbers in Sugarcane × Bamboo Hybrids . In: Nature 141 (1938), p. 925.
17. ↑ EK Janaki Ammal: The effect of the Himalayan uplift on the genetic composition of the flora of Asia . In: Indian botan. Soc. , 39 (1960), pp. 327-334.