1 week Ago By Arun Kumar Grover and Rajinder Singh
The Indian National Science Academy (INSA) aptly chose to felicitate Prof Chandrima Shaha, its only woman president (2020-22) in over nine decades, on this year’s International Woman’s Day.Her biography titled ‘Chandrima Shaha: A lifelong journey of scientific inquiry’, authored by two science historians Rajinder Singh and Suprakash C Roy, was released by her predecessor (2017-19) and successor (2023-25) presidents of INSA — namely Ajay K Sood, currently Principal Scientific Adviser to Government of India (GOI), and Asutosh Sharma, former Secretary of Department of Science Technology, GOI.The Indian National Science Academy originated as the National Institute of Sciences (NIS) in Calcutta on January 7, 1935, to coordinate various scientific organisations, provincial science academies and professional bodies.
In September 1943, NIS held a symposium to plan for organisation of scientific research in post-second world war India. Its deliberations nucleated a four-month-long visit by Nobel Laureate AV Hill FRS, as the Secretary of The Royal Society London and British MP. His report titled ‘Scientific Research in India’ included a recommendation supporting NIS as a national scientific body.
After Independence in 1947, the Government of India implemented it in 1951, NIS moved to New Delhi and was renamed INSA in 1970. NIS/INSA has elected presidents biennially until 1992, and every three years since then. Out of 40 presidents, Chandrima Shaha was the second last.
Women’s representation in leadership remains low across India’s science academies. The record of National Academy of Sciences of India (NASI), initiated as a provincial science academy by Meghnad Saha at Allahabad in 1930, has been no better. It changes its president every two years, but only one woman, (late) Dr Manju Sharma, got elected as its 34th president 30 years ago.
Nobel Laureate CV Raman (1888-1970) had remained life-long president of the Indian Academy of Sciences (IASc.), founded by him as a provincial academy at Bangalore in 1934. The IASc.
has not elected any woman in the last 54 years. However, contemporary trends in higher education in India suggest change(s) in future. With more than two-thirds of PhDs in science awarded to women and three-fourths of university exam toppers being female, gender balance in academic leadership is expected to become even by 2047 and it could reverse by the end of the present century.
Prof Chandrima Shaha is indeed an iconic role model for woman scientists. Her multifaceted interests and achievements are akin to those of the legendary Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar and Homi Bhabha. Born on October 14, 1952, to parents Karuna Shaha, a talented singer and painter, and Shambhu Shaha, a renowned photographer, her interest in science was sparked by her father who bought her an old telescope to observe planets and stars.
However, a pivotal moment in her childhood came when she examined a drop of rainwater from a puddle under a microscope— another gift from her father — and discovered a hidden world invisible to the naked eye. Fascinated, she went on to study various insects and their transformations, both in nature and under the microscope. What began as a childhood fascination with the microscopic world eventually became her lifelong profession.
She had two other options to pursue as a career: photography and cricket. She had inherited the passion in photography from her father, who had the distinction of being the photographer of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941). An exhibition of photographs taken by her father of Rabindranath Tagore in his last decade had been inaugurated by the Prime Minister Nehru in Delhi on the occasion of the centenary of the latter in 1961.
A young Chandrima at her father’s exhibition on Tagore photographs (1961) in Delhi with Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, then PM of India.In the next decade, she herself was adjudged the ‘Best Woman Photographer in India’ in the prestigious “Award 75” competition organised by ‘Camera Photo Monthly’ in 1975. Among the top 10 photographers in India, she had secured the fifth position.
Her passion for photography opened the doors for possible career in cricket as well, she had gone to cover the process of selections for a cricket event and ended up getting named into Bengal’s women team herself. She rose to become vice captain, and participated in the National Women’s Cricket Championship from 1973-75. She also played for the East Zone team in Rani Jhansi Trophy in 1974.
However, five decades earlier, her passion for scientific research prevailed over other options. She also gave up the role of live cricket commentator that she had excelled in the East Zone’s match against the visiting Sri Lankan team in 1975.After earning her PhD from the Indian Institute of Chemical Biology in Kolkata, Chandrima Shaha pursued postdoctoral research in the US in 1980.
She worked with renowned reproductive biologists Gilbert S Greenwald at the University of Kansas Medical Center and C Wayne Bardin at the Population Council in New York. Inspired to expand her expertise, she expressed interest in joining the Population Council. However, Prof GP Talwar, founder of the National Institute of Immunology (NII), convinced her to return to India in 1984 to establish an independent laboratory.
At NII, she initially explored developing a male fertility vaccine but later shifted focus to studying host-parasite interactions, cell survival and death in unicellular and multicellular organisms, making significant contributions to reproductive biology. She progressed to become Director of NII for five years, superannuating in 2016. She retained her position of Professor of Eminence thereafter.
She is currently back in Kolkata as J C Bose Distinguished Chair Professor at her first research alma mater CSIR-IICB. Dr Shaha influenced the scientific world not only through her publications, but also mentored various scientists who, today possess very high positions in the scientific world.Chandrima Shaha with her predecessor president of INSA Ajay K Sood (middle) and successor Ashutosh Sharma.
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