23 August 1918 · 16 August 2001

Anna
Mani Pioneering Indian Female Scientist and Meteorologist

The Weather Woman of India

Physicist and meteorologist, pioneer of indigenous weather instruments, and the woman who transformed how India measures its skies.

Anna Mani at a meteorological field station, standing beside weather instruments in a light sari.
Anna Mani in the field with meteorological instruments.

I. The Beginning

A life
measured
in light. The life of a trailblazing woman in Indian science.

Anna Modayil Mani, one of India’s pioneering female scientists, was born in 1918 in Peermade (Peermedu), Travancore, now Kerala, the seventh of eight children of a Syrian Christian family. Her father, Modayil Pothen Mani, was the first Indian engineer to work for the Travancore Public Works Department. Her mother, Ammamma, was a homemaker who raised five boys and three girls.

She completed her schooling at Christava Mahilalayam, Aluva, with distinction, topping all the girls of her batch and earning a medal. A voracious reader, she is famously said to have asked for a set of encyclopaedias instead of the traditional gift of diamond earrings. She chose science at a time when few Indian women entered laboratories.

At the Indian Institute of Science she was one of only three women in C. V. Raman’s laboratory, and published six single-author papers, yet was never awarded her doctorate, for reasons that remain unclear to this day.

Over more than five decades she devoted herself to measuring India’s skies, solar radiation, ozone, atmospheric electricity and wind energy, and became widely known as the Weather Woman of India.

“We have only one life.”

WMO Bulletin interview, 1991

Download PDF bio

A two-page printable summary · PDF, ~85 KB

II. Her Own Terms

The person
& the pioneer.

A · A serious scientist, on her own terms

She was exacting about measurement and accuracy above all else. Under her leadership, India built rather than imported its weather instruments. In an era when women in Indian research were nearly unheard of, she published single-author papers quietly, on the strength of the work alone.

Her precept, recalled by her colleague Oliver Ashford, was disarmingly plain: you can but do your best. Asked what she would say to young people entering meteorology, her fuller reply carried the same clarity:

“We have only one life. First equip yourself for the job, make full use of your talents and then love and enjoy the work, making the most of being out of doors and in contact with nature.”

to young meteorologists

Work was her element. Reflecting late in life, she remarked, “I should be most unhappy to wake up without the prospect of some work to do.”Once the day’s work was done, she turned to reading and to music. WMO Bulletin, 1991

B · A reluctant feminist icon

She is celebrated today as a trailblazer for Indian women in science, yet she herself waved the label away. She told the WMO she felt neither penalised nor privileged for being a woman in a male-dominated field. She broke barriers, in a sense, by refusing to regard them as barriers at all.

“My being a woman had absolutely no bearing on what I chose to do with my life. What is this hoopla about women and science?”

Anna Mani

Mahatma Gandhi’s visit to her hometown in 1925 left a deep impression on the young Anna: she wore simple khadi for the rest of her life. Biographers recall her as exacting, fiercely independent and principled; she mended her own clothes, raised dogs and birds, and lived frugally by conviction.

Outside work she was an avid bird-watcher and a lover of nature and the outdoors, devoted to her dogs. She never married. Her independence was total.

III. A Chronology

Eight decades,
quietly kept.

  1. Peermade, Travancore

    Born 23 August, the seventh of eight children of Modayil Pothen Mani, the first Indian engineer in the Travancore Public Works Department, and Ammamma, a homemaker who raised five boys and three girls.

  2. Chennai

    Studied first at Women’s Christian College, then Presidency College, graduating with a BA (Honours) in 1939. She spent a further year at Women’s Christian College as a demonstrator before joining C. V. Raman’s laboratory in 1940.

  3. Bangalore

    Wins a scholarship to the Indian Institute of Science; researches the spectroscopy of diamonds and rubies under Nobel laureate C. V. Raman. One of only three women in his laboratory, she published six single-author research papers, yet was never awarded a PhD; the reasons remain unclear.

  4. London

    Travels to Imperial College on a government scholarship, specialising in meteorological instrumentation.

  5. Pune

    Returns to India and joins the India Meteorological Department. Mentored by S. P. Venkiteshwaran, Director of the Surface Instruments Unit, she rises to become Head of Surface Instruments and later Director of the division. Under her leadership the department standardised the design drawings for more than a hundred different weather instruments, ending India’s dependence on imports.

  6. Across India

    Establishes a network of solar radiation monitoring stations and advances ozone research, pioneering India’s own ozonesonde (the balloon-borne apparatus for measuring atmospheric ozone) and making India one of the few countries to build its own. When Vikram Sarabhai needed a meteorological observatory at the Thumba rocket launch site ahead of India’s first rocket launch in 1963, Anna Mani was the physicist he turned to.

  7. Delhi

    Appointed Deputy Director-General of the India Meteorological Department; serves as a WMO consultant in Egypt in 1975; retires in 1976.

  8. Bangalore

    Visiting professor at the Raman Research Institute, where she helps set up a millimetre radio-wave telescope for which precise weather measurement was essential. She then directs the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology’s field research station at Peenya, Bangalore, leading the mapping of India’s solar and wind resources and setting up a factory to manufacture instruments.

  9. India

    Edited Patrika, the newsletter of the Indian Academy of Sciences, of which she was an elected Fellow (as well as Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy). She serves on the IAS Council and as its Secretary, and chairs the association that publishes the journal Current Science.

  10. New Delhi

    Awarded the K. R. Ramanathan Medal by the Indian National Science Academy for her work on ozone.

  11. India

    Awarded the K. S. Rao Memorial Award for her work on solar energy.

  12. Thiruvananthapuram

    In her last years she developed a Parkinson’s-plus condition and moved to Kerala to be cared for by her sister’s family. She passed away on 16 August, a week before her 83rd birthday.

V. Remembering Anna

What she
leaves behind.

№ 01

A legacy in instruments

Under her leadership, India stopped importing many of its weather instruments, building its own rain gauges, anemometers, radiosondes, pyranometers and ozone instruments. A quiet act of scientific self-reliance.

№ 02

Honours & remembrance

Member of the WMO, the Indian National Science Academy, the American Meteorological Society, the International Solar Energy Society and the International Ozone Association. The WMO celebrated her centenary in 2018, Google honoured her with a Doodle on her 104th birthday in 2022, and an award for women scientists in India now bears her name. The National Institute of Wind Energy in Chennai named its library and reading room after her; India Post released a special day cover in November 2021; Vigyan Prasar produced the documentary Weathering Heights in 2016; awards in her name have been instituted at Women’s Christian College and (2018–2022) by the Ministry of Earth Sciences; and the Astronomical Society of India runs an Anna Mani Gender Equity lecture series.

№ 03

Family memories

[Personal recollections from her family will be added here]

VI. Frequently asked

About Anna Mani.

Who was Anna Mani?
Anna Modayil Mani (23 August 1918 – 16 August 2001) was an Indian physicist and meteorologist, often called ‘The Weather Woman of India’. She pioneered the design and standardisation of indigenous meteorological instruments and led research on solar radiation, atmospheric ozone and wind energy over a five-decade career.
Why is Anna Mani called the Weather Woman of India?
As Deputy Director-General of the India Meteorological Department, she drove India’s shift away from imported weather instruments, overseeing indigenous rain gauges, anemometers, radiosondes, pyranometers and ozone instruments, and established the country’s solar radiation monitoring network and its ozone research programme.
Where did Anna Mani study and work?
She studied at Women’s Christian College and Presidency College in Madras (Chennai), researched under C. V. Raman at the Indian Institute of Science, and trained in meteorological instrumentation at Imperial College London. She served the India Meteorological Department from 1948, later becoming a visiting professor at the Raman Research Institute and directing IITM’s field research station at Peenya.
What awards and honours did Anna Mani receive?
She received the K. R. Ramanathan Medal (1987) for her ozone work and the K. S. Rao Memorial Award (1993) for solar energy research, and was a Fellow of both the Indian Academy of Sciences and the Indian National Science Academy. Google honoured her with a Doodle on her 104th birthday in 2022.
Did Anna Mani marry or have children?
She never married and had no children. She lived frugally and independently, wore khadi saris, mended her own clothes, and kept dogs and birds, devoting her life to scientific work.

A Picture Book

Her story, for the youngest readers.

In 2018, Pratham Books published Anna’s Extraordinary Experiments with Weather, written by Nandita Jayaraj and illustrated by Priya Kuriyan. A picture-book biography that opens at Anna’s eighth birthday, where she turns down a gift of diamond earrings and wishes instead for books, books and more books.

From there it follows her from the family library to the laboratory, all the way to the ozonesonde.

The book is openly licensed and free to read online.

Read it free on StoryWeaver (opens in new tab)

Anna’s Extraordinary Experiments with Weather · Written by Nandita Jayaraj, illustrated by Priya Kuriyan · © Pratham Books, 2018 · CC BY 4.0

Loading image: Cover of Anna’s Extraordinary Experiments with Weather, illustrated by Priya Kuriyan, showing young Anna ManiCover of Anna’s Extraordinary Experiments with Weather, illustrated by Priya Kuriyan, showing young Anna Mani

VII. Further Reading

A working
bibliography.

The Biography

For Children

Essays & Scholarship

  • An Appreciation of Anna Mani (opens in new tab)

    Abha Sur · in Lilavati’s Daughters: The Women Scientists of India · Indian Academy of Sciences · 2008

    The most-cited essay on her life, by the MIT science historian who interviewed her.

  • Dispersed Radiance: Caste, Gender and Modern Science in India

    Abha Sur · Navayana · 2011

    Examines the women of C. V. Raman’s laboratory, Mani among them.

  • Anna Mani (opens in new tab)

    Arvind Gupta · in Bright Sparks: Inspiring Indian Scientists from the Past · INSA · 2009

    A short illustrated life for young readers.

Tributes & Remembrances

  • Anna Modayil Mani – A Tribute

    Oliver M. Ashford · Current Science 81(9) · 2001

    By her friend and WMO colleague; source of her precept ‘you can but do your best’.

  • The Life and Times of a Pioneer

    Abha Sur · The Hindu · 14 October 2001

    Original URL defunct.

  • Anna Mani – A Student Remembers (opens in new tab)

    C. R. Sreedharan · Resonance · November 2008

    A personal memoir by a scientist she trained.

  • Interview in the WMO Bulletin

    World Meteorological Organization · 1991

    The source of her best-known reflections on work and life.

In the Press

Film

  • Weathering Heights

    Vigyan Prasar documentary · 2016

Companion guide

Anna Mani & her contemporaries →

A short guide to the pioneering Indian women scientists of her generation Kamala Sohonie, Janaki Ammal, Asima Chatterjee and Rajeshwari Chatterjee.

Women in STEM in India, 1911–2010.