“You seem to know precious little about physics,” remarked CV Raman — the celebrated physicist and Nobel laureate, equally notorious for his disdain for women’s intellect — to a young Malayali researcher. Yet, while Raman understood better than anyone how light would traverse, the great scientist could hardly foresee the young woman’s future journey. For, she would go on to become India’s foremost woman physicist. This is the remarkable story of Anna Modayil Mani.

Malayali women’s role in shaping Kerala’s modernity has long been celebrated. Yet, the paradox is glaring: their absence in positions of power remains striking in a state that prides itself on gender justice. Against this backdrop, the lives of two Malayali women born in pre-independence India — E.K. Janaki Ammal (1897-1984), the pioneering botanist, and Anna Mani (1918-2001), the trailblazing physicist and meteorologist — stand out as exceptional stories of women who breached the most impregnable male bastion: science.

Both achieved distinction in the mid-20th century, in fields still dominated by men. Their extraordinary lives remained largely uncelebrated until recently. Two new biographies — Savithri Preetha Nair’s Chromosome Woman, Nomad Scientist (Routledge, 2023) on Janaki Ammal, and Asha Gopinathan’s Anna Mani: The Uncut Diamond (National Book Trust, 2025) — now restore them to public memory.

Nair’s 611-page tome on the Thalassery-born Janaki Ammal is the most comprehensive account of her life and work, richly documenting her scientific explorations. Ammal’s achievements — from being honoured with a Padma Shri to having magnolia species named after her by the British Royal Horticultural Society — have slowly begun to gain recognition.

In contrast, Anna Mani’s legacy has remained far less visible, despite her being known as the Mother of Indian Meteorology. Long before “Make in India” became a political slogan, Mani was indigenously developing scientific instruments that made India self-reliant. Gopinathan’s meticulously researched biography finally gives her story the attention it deserves.

Interestingly, one of the very few earlier writings in Malayalam on this physicist from Peermedu, who went on to become the first woman to become a Director at the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), Pune and headed many international bodies on climatology and geosciences, was by Gopinathan’s late mother, Dr K. Saradamoni, a renowned sociologist. Perhaps the only significant earlier work that covers the........

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