Anna Mani: Pioneering Meteorologist and Instrumentation Expert
Anna Mani (23 August 1918 – 16 August 2001) was an esteemed Indian physicist and meteorologist. Notably, she held the position of Deputy Director General at the Indian Meteorological Department and also contributed as a visiting professor at the Raman Research Institute. Throughout her career, Mani made significant advancements in the realm of meteorological instrumentation. She conducted extensive research and authored numerous papers on topics encompassing solar radiation, ozone, and wind energy measurements.
Life and Career
Anna Modayil Mani was born in 1918 in Peermade, a part of then Travancore, now located in Kerala, India. She hailed from a Syrian Christian family, with her father being a civil engineer and an agnostic. As the seventh among eight siblings, she displayed a strong appetite for reading from a young age. Her admiration for Gandhi’s efforts during the Vaikom satyagraha and her alignment with his nationalist movement led her to exclusively wear khadi garments.
Following her graduation, Anna Mani made groundbreaking contributions in the field of scientific research. At the Institute of Science, she received mentorship from C.V Raman, a Nobel Prize laureate renowned for his work on the properties of rubies and diamonds. Her dedicated efforts included recording and analyzing the luminescence of diamonds, often demanding up to 20 hours of labor in the laboratory. Between 1942 and 1945, she authored five individual academic papers on the spectroscopy of rubies and diamonds.
Tributes and Legacy
In commemoration of her 100th birth anniversary, the World Meteorological Organization honored Anna Mani by publishing a profile of her life, complete with an interview. Furthermore, on August 23, 2022, Google paid tribute to her legacy through a Google Doodle on her 104th birth anniversary.
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