She broke caste, gender barriers with science

E K Janaki Ammal

died in 1984, but the white

Magnolia Kobus

named after her at

Kew Gardens

in the UK still blooms as a tribute to the great

botanist

. Born in 1897, Janaki grew up in a large family in the house of Edathil in Kerala’s Thalaserry. The family was ostracised because of the ‘caste and legitimacy of birth’ of Devi, Janaki’s mother and the second wife of E K Krishnan. But, Janaki she swam against the tide of caste hierarchy to create a world full of discoveries in the field of botany.

A speech by Mahatma Gandhi that Janaki heard when she was just 19 stirred patriotic feelings in her. Her father’s interest and writings related to nature instilled in her a desire to explore science. After graduating in botany from Chennai’s Queen Mary’s College and getting an honours degree from Presidency College, also in Chennai, she got attracted to cytogenetics, a study of chromosomes and cell behaviour.

The journey of Janaki life literally began here. She showed through her life that science knows no caste, gender or social boundaries. This was the reason why the Nikari series of talks recently-held under the banner of ‘Manarkeni’, a Tamil research journal, decided to tell the story of Janaki. The lecture was delivered by S Krishnaswamy, former professor at the School of Biotechnology, Madurai Kamaraj University.

"Her career shows that scientists must speak their mind with social consciousness even if it means going against the policies of the government. In today’s context, it becomes necessary to bring Janaki to the forefront from which she had been sidelined in history thanks to gender and caste discrimination," said Krishnaswamy.

After working at Women’s Christian College, Janaki went to University of Michigan to pursue her doctorate. There she discovered a new variety of brinjal that exhibited triploidy instead of the normal diploid. She worked on the genetics of hybrids of saccharum (sugarcane) and sorghum (corn) with the famous Cyril Darlington at John Innes Horticultural Institute near London. This was the turning point in her life. "Most of what we know about Janaki comes through her written correspondence with Darlington. These have been preserved in the Bodleian library in Oxford. Sadly, there is no archive related to her in India."

After returning to India, Janaki worked briefly at the Maharaja Government College in Thiruvananthapuram. She later joined the Imperial Sugarcane Institute in Coimbatore. "Janaki was responsible for showing that the saccharum variety used here for breeding was of Indian origin and also established hybrid lines of sugarcane with corn, maize, bamboo and a variety of grass. Her efforts to publish the results in the prestigious journal Nature led her to face discrimination at the hands of the male, upper caste establishment. She decided to fight it and got two articles on the sugarcane-corn and sugarcane-bamboo hybrids published in Nature in 1938," said Krishnaswamy.

Despite the impending World War II, Janaki in 1939 went to Edinburg where she was invited to talk in an international genetics conference. The conference ended abruptly due to the war and she could not return. But she went on to work at the John Innes Institute with Darlington. "In 1945, the duo brought out an atlas of cultivated plants which was based on their chromosome studies of over 10,000 plants. Her work was recognized by the Kew Gardens which offered her the position of a cytologist —the first time to a woman. It was her work in the Kew Gardens at Wisley on Magnolia that made them later name a flower after her," he added.


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