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Anna Mani

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Anna Mani
അന്ന മാണി
Anna Mani
Born(1918-08-23)23 August 1918
Peermade, Travancore
Died16 August 2001(2001-08-16) (aged 82)
Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala
NationalityIndian
Scientific career
FieldsMeteorology, Physics
InstitutionsIndian Meteorological Department, Pune and Raman Research Institute, Bangalore

Anna Mani (23 August 1918 – 16 August 2001) was an Indian physicist and meteorologist.[1] She retired as the Deputy Director General of the Indian Meteorological Department and also served as a visiting professor at the Raman Research Institute.[1] Mani made contributions to the field of meteorological instrumentation, conducted research, and published numerous papers on solar radiation, ozone, and wind energy measurements.[2]

Early life

Anna Modayil Mani was born in 1918 at Peermade, then Travancore, now Kerala, India to a Syrian Christian family.[3] Her father was a civil engineer and an agnostic.[1] She was the seventh of eight children in her family, and a voracious reader.[1] Impressed by Gandhi during Vaikom satyagraha and inspired by his nationalist movement, she took to wearing only khadi garments.[1]

Anna Mani's formative years were spent engrossed in books, and by the age of eight she had read almost all the books in Malayalam at her public library. On her eighth birthday, she declined to accept her family's customary gift of a set of diamond earrings, asking instead for a set of Encyclopædia Britannica. The world of books opened her to new ideas and imbued in her a deep sense of social justice which informed and shaped her life.[1]

Education

Mani wanted to pursue dancing, but she decided in favour of physics because she liked the subject. In 1939, she graduated from the Pachaiyappas College in Chennai (then Madras), with a B.Sc Honors degree in physics and chemistry. In 1940, she won a scholarship for research in the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. In 1945, she went to Imperial College, London to pursue graduate studies in physics but ended up specialising in meteorological instruments.[3]

Career

After graduating from Pachai college, Mani worked under Prof. C V Raman, researching the optical properties of ruby and diamond.[2][4] She authored five research papers and submitted her Ph.D. dissertation, but she was not granted a Ph.D. because she did not have a master's degree in physics. After returning to India in 1948, she joined the meteorology department in Pune, where she published numerous research papers on meteorological instrumentation. Mani was responsible for arranging for meteorological instruments imported from Britain. By 1953, she had become the head of a division of 121 men.[5]

Mani wished to make India independent in weather instruments. She standardized the drawings of close to one hundred weather instruments. In 1957 and '58, she set up a network of stations to measure solar radiation. In Bangalore, she set up a small workshop that manufactured instruments to measure wind speed and solar energy and worked on developing an apparatus to measure ozone. Mani was made a member of the International Ozone Association. She set up a meteorological observatory and an instrumentation tower at the Thumba rocket launching facility.[3][6]

She was associated with many scientific organizations, including the Indian National Science Academy, American Meteorological Society, International Solar Energy Society, World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), and the International Association for Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics. In 1987, Mani was a recipient of the INSA K. R. Ramanathan Medal.

Mani was transferred to Delhi in 1969 as the Deputy Director General. In 1975, she served as a WMO consultant in Egypt. She retired as the deputy director general of the Indian Meteorological Department in 1976.[6]

In 1994, Mani suffered a stroke and died on 16 August 2001 in Thiruvananthapuram, a week before her 83rd birthday.[1]

Inventions[7]

  • Anna Mani standardised drawing of more than 100 instruments to measure the report about weather.
  • She started measuring atmospheric Ozone Layer when no one in the world talks and even know about it.
  • She designed an instrument to measure the atmospheric Ozone named "Ozonesonde".
  • She standardised drawing of more than 100 instruments to measure the report about weather.
  • She started measuring atmospheric Ozone Layer when no one in the world talks and even know about it.
  • Anna Mani[8] invented and played the foundation of countries wind energy dream and set it up at across 700 locations to measure wind speed.
  • She also invented and setup the measuring devices to measure solar radiations across the country to harness solar energy.

Tributes

The World Meteorological Organization remembered her on her 100th birth anniversary and published her life profile along with an interview.[9]

On 23 August 2022, Google honoured Mani with a Google Doodle on her 104th birth anniversary.[10]

Publications

  • 1992. Wind Energy Resource Survey in India, vv. 2. xi + 22 pp. Ed. Allied Publ. ISBN 8170233585, ISBN 9788170233589
  • 1981. Solar Radiation over India x + 548 pp.[2]
  • 1980. The Handbook for Solar Radiation data for India

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Sur, Abha (14 October 2001). "The Life and Times of a Pioneer". The Hindu. Archived from the original on 13 April 2014. Retrieved 7 October 2012.
  2. ^ a b c Sur, Abha (2007). Lilavati's daughters: The women scientists of India. Indian Academy of Science. pp. 23–25.
  3. ^ a b c Gupta, Aravind. "Anna Mani" (PDF). Platinum Jubilee Publishing of INSA. Indian National science academy. Retrieved 7 October 2012.
  4. ^ "Anna Mani | The Best of Indian Science". nobelprizeseries.in. Retrieved 9 September 2021.
  5. ^ Ashford, Oliver. "Anna Modayil Mani - A Tribute" (PDF). Indian Institute of Science.
  6. ^ a b "Anna Mani Is One of India's Greatest Woman Scientists. Yet You Probably Haven't Heard Her Story". The Better India. 21 January 2017. Retrieved 20 January 2018.
  7. ^ Anna Mani Inventions
  8. ^ Anna Mani Biography and Inventions at Wiki Gyan
  9. ^ "Celebrating pioneer Indian meteorologist Anna Mani". public.wmo.int. 23 August 2018. Retrieved 22 August 2022.
  10. ^ "Anna Mani's 104th Birthday". Google Doodles. Retrieved 23 August 2022.
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