ThinkHer

In an order dated August 19, Delhi High Court directed the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the Department of Telecommunications to immediately block access to Sci-Hub, Library Genesis, and other so-called shadow libraries ( online repositories of freely available digital media that are normally paywalled, access-controlled, or otherwise not readily accessible)   in India. The ruling has reignited a global debate over a fundamental question: who truly owns knowledge? For countless students and researchers, these platforms were lifelines—often the only way to access the vast body of academic literature locked behind costly paywalls. At the center of this storm is Alexandra Elbakyan, the Kazakh computer programmer who founded Sci-Hub in 2011. Frequently dubbed “ science’s pirate queen ”, she was recognized by ' Nature' in 2016 as one of the ten people who mattered most in science. Alexandra Elbakyan clicked by Apneet Jolly Born in 1988 in Almaty, Kazakhstan...

Clara Belle Williams was the first African-American graduate of New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts. To understand the significance of this, we need to look more closely at what it was like to be a black woman in the early 1900s. It was a time when the very idea of education was a privilege withheld by both race and gender. It was also a world where information technology was still in its infancy, so there was no Google, YouTube or online classes. Knowledge was confined behind classroom or library doors, allowing entry to only those deemed worthy of access. To learn meant persistence: walking miles to schools that lacked resources, relying on scraps of secondhand books, and enduring open hostility from institutions that insisted you didn’t belong. In that climate, the act of studying was not just about curiosity; it was an act of defiance.  Clara Belle Drisdale Williams,  From the exhibition:  New Mexico’s African American Legacy: Visible, Vital,...

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...