Anna Mani's Google Doodle, Who Was She?

Born on 23rd August 1918, Anna Mani was an Indian physicist and a renowned meteorologist. Anna Mani served as the Deputy Director General of the Indian Meteorological Department and served as a visiting professor at the Raman Research Institute. Anna Mani’s contributions to the field of meteorological instrumentation conducted research in solar radiation and had her papers published on research for ozone and wind energy measurements.

Anna Modayil Mani was born in Kerala to a Syrian Christian family. Anna’s father was a civil engineer and an agnostic. Being the seventh of eight children, Anna was a voracious reader during her childhood and was impressed by the activities of Gandhi during Vaikon Satyagraha. She was inspired by the nationalist movement and took to wearing only khadi garments.

The Mani family was from an upper-class professional household where from childhood the male children were groomed for higher-level careers. The daughters were primed for marriage in the Mani family, however, Anna Mani would have none of it. Anna Mani’s formative years were engrossed in books and by the age of eight, she had read almost all the books in Malayalam in the public library. When she was twelve years old, she read all the English books at the library. On her eighth birthday, Anna declined to accept her family’s customary gift of a set of diamond earrings and opted to buy a set of Encyclopaedia Britannica. The world of books opened her to the world of ideas and imbued her with a deep sense of social justice which informed and shaped her life.

Anna Mani wanted to pursue dancing, however, she decided in favor of physics because she liked the subject. In 1939, she graduated from the Pachaiyappas College in Chennai, with a B.Sc. Honors degree in physics and chemistry. In 1940, she won a scholarship for research at the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru. In 1945, Anna Mani went to Imperial College, London, and there she pursued graduate studies in Physics. Anna Mani ended up specializing in meteorological instruments.

Following her completion of graduation from Pachai college, Anna Mani worked under Prof. C.V. Raman and conducted research on the optical properties of ruby and diamond. Anna Mani has five research papers and submitted her Ph.D. dissertation. However, Anna Mani was not granted a Ph.D. degree because she did not have a master’s degree in physics. After returning to India in 1948, Anna Mani joined the Meteorological department in Pune and she published numerous research papers on meteorological instruments. Anna Mani was mostly responsible for arranging for meteorological instruments, imported from Britain. By 1953, she had become the head of the division with 121 men working for her.

Anna Mani continued fulfilling her wishes in India independent of weather instruments. She standardized the drawing of close to 100 different weather instruments. From 1957-58, she set up a network of stations for measuring solar radiation. In Bengaluru, Anna Mani had set up a small workshop that manufactured instruments for the purpose of measuring wind speed and solar energy. Anna Mani worked on the development of an apparatus to measure the ozone. Anna Mani worked was stated as a member of the International Ozone Association and she set up a meteorological observatory and an instrumentation tower at the Thumba rocket launching facility.

With her dedication to work, Anna Mani stayed unmarried. She got associated with many scientific organizations which include the Indian National Science Academy, American Meteorological Society, International Solar Energy Society, World Meteorological Organization (WMO), and the International Association for Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics, and as such. In 1987, she was the recipient of the INSA K. R. Ramanathan Medal.

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

In 1994, Anna Mani suffered from a stroke and died on August 16th, 2001 in Thiruvananthapuram, which was a week before her 83rd birthday.

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

Today is Anna Mani’s 104th birth anniversary and Google honors Mani with a Google Doodle.