ThinkHer

Recently, I found myself in a conversation about the concept of private experimental labs—spaces where individuals, with some training, could pay to conduct experiments. On the surface, it sounds liberating, but I couldn’t shake the unease that this would make science even more of an elite pursuit than it already is. After all, science thrives on collaboration, shared knowledge, and rigorous training. Yet, history reminds us that not all contributions to science have come through formal institutions or collective laboratories. Some emerged from solitary searches, driven by individuals whose curiosity and persistence overcame the absence of public spaces or recognition. Jiang Hui, a 19th-century Chinese woman who made her own star charts, was one such figure. Jiang Hui, Made on Canva @Thinkher Born in 1839 in Sichuan province, Jiang Hui grew up in an intellectual household. Her father, Jiang Hanchun, was a writer and recluse with wide-ranging interests in alchemy, astronomy, an...

Who is a scientist? I know we have already lingered on this question before, and we did find out that 'Scientist' (a gender neutral term) was first coined to describe a woman (Mary Somerville). But here's my question: Who do you think qualifies as a scientist? If your answer is anyone who studies science, well then, even a 6-year-old studies science. Would they qualify as a scientist? If your answer is anybody with a doctorate in science, then you're in for a surprise. Michael Faraday, renowned for his contributions to electromagnetism and electrochemistry, never had a formal PhD. There is more. A P J Abdul Kalam became a scientist first, and then, only later, received numerous honorary doctorates from various universities. So again, who is a scientist? Although being a scientist is a widely recognised profession today, there is no formal process to determine who is a scientist and who is not. Anyone can be a scientist in some sense; anyone who systematically investigat...

The first semester during my undergraduate years, there was a  “History of Physics” course. The syllabus was basically a list of scientists stretched from Aristotle to Einstein, a sweeping arc of minds that had shaped the discipline. The biographies we read were neatly arranged on a timeline of progress, their personal lives mostly stripped of social context. It was a history of achievements, not of people. These were tales of individual brilliance, where obstacles existed mainly to be overcome. And in this, I first recognized the pattern of what scholars now call the “superscientist” narrative: an individual—usually male—who triumphs over adversity to push the boundaries of knowledge. When women did appear, their stories followed the same arc but with a twist. Their struggle wasn’t against poverty or bad luck, but against patriarchy itself. Think of how we tell the stories of Marie Curie, Janaki Ammal, or Rosalind Franklin—as models of resilience, who not only conducted pathbreaki...