ThinkHer

How do you write the biography of someone who lived only 28 years? Not long enough, in conventional terms, to gather disciples, build institutions, or leave behind a lineage that carries their name forward. The usual markers of legacy feel inadequate. And yet, some lives resist that arithmetic. They do not stretch across decades but deepen within them, compressing intensity, curiosity, and conviction into a brief span of time. The question shifts from duration to depth. How deeply did they touch the world? J. Vijaya ’s life demands that question. J. Vijaya, PC@ Sactuary Nature Foundation Much of what we know about her comes through the recollections of those who worked alongside her. They remember her as someone who did not inherit a discipline, but helped shape one. At a time when herpetology (a branch of zoology that studies reptiles and amphibians) in India was still emerging, and when it was rare for a woman to enter such a field, Vijaya stepped in with quiet certainty. As a st...

For centuries, knowledge was not simply discovered; it was guarded. Universities, academies, and scientific societies were not neutral spaces. They were shaped by hierarchies of gender, race, caste, class, and religion, and access to lectures, mentorship, correspondence networks, and degrees was restricted accordingly. Exclusion was not incidental; it was built into the structure of institutions. Yet those kept outside were never absent from intellectual life. When institutions closed ranks, parallel practices of learning emerged. For women like Mary Jackson, Ynes Mexia, Laura Bassi, and many others, formal pathways were denied, so informal ones were cultivated. Exclusion shaped the conditions of their work; it did not stop it. Sophie Germain belongs to that lineage of persistence. Born in Paris in 1776, she came of age during the French Revolution. It was a time that promised liberty, but society still withheld education from women. Mathematics seized her imaginatio...

Haimabati Sen, born Haimabati Ghosh, was among the earliest female physicians in colonial India. A woman who transformed her unimaginable early trauma into a lifelong mission of healing and social change. Her life embodies resilience, quiet courage, and a refusal to accept the limitations imposed on women of her time. Haimabati was born in 1866 in the Khulna district of the then Bengal Presidency, into a Kulin Kayastha zamindar family. Her father, a zamindar, was unusually liberal for his time — he allowed her to wear male attire and to study alongside her male cousins, a rare privilege for a girl in that era. Y et, societal norms prevailed. At the mere age of nine, she was married off to a 45-year-old widower and Deputy Magistrate with two daughters nearly her own age.  Her husband’s behaviour exposed her, at a very young age, to unsettling and sexually abusive circumstances. He forced himself on her, leaving her frightened and still — “like a piece of wood,” she later wrote....

In the crowded pantheon of science, Ada Lovelace stands out as a rare woman whose name has survived the fog of time. Unlike many of her contemporaries, whose accomplishments were buried under the anonymity of their male peers, Lovelace has remained visible, appearing in graphic novels and reimagined period dramas as both scientist and legend. She is often celebrated as the world’s first computer programmer while others have dismissed her as an overhyped amateur, known more for being the daughter of the poet Lord Byron than for her scientific contributions.  Ada Lovelace daguerreotype by Antoine Claudet Born Augusta Ada Byron in London on December 10, 1815, she entered the world in the shadow of her father’s tumultuous fame. Her parents’ marriage dissolved just weeks after her birth, and Byron left England, never to see his daughter again. Her mother, Anne Isabella Milbanke, whom Byron teasingly called the "Princess of Parallelograms,” was determined that Ada would not inherit her ...

Most people imagine that the choice of what to study springs from personal passion — a love for numbers, ideas, or discovery. But history shows that this decision is rarely untouched by the politics and economics of the time. Across the world, waves of educational enthusiasm have mirrored national priorities and market demands. During the Cold War, for instance, government funding for defense and space research triggered a surge in students choosing physics and engineering, seen as patriotic and prestigious. In contrast, the 1990s and 2000s saw the rise of finance, management, and computer science, reflecting globalization and the digital economy’s pull toward data, coding, and markets. Every generation’s “hot field” is a mirror of its moment and is defined as much by geopolitics and money as by intellectual curiosity.   Against this backdrop, veterinary science seems to stand apart — often seen as a field chosen out of personal affection for animals rather than political or e...

Natural history, at its heart, is an act of attentive recording. To identify a plant, you must first look—closely—at its leaves, its flowers, the way it branches and bends. You note the shape of a seed pod, the scent of a crushed stem, the soil beneath it. Identification today might involve a field guide, a herbarium sheet, or an app that matches images to species, but the essence remains the same: careful observation, naming, and preservation. These acts of noticing have long been the quiet foundations of science. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this quiet work opened a back door for women into a world that otherwise excluded them. Barred from universities and scientific societies, they contributed by collecting plants, shells, insects, and fossils, often for family members or for emerging museums (check Mary Anning 's work for example). These collections whether kept at home or sent to herbaria or a museum, were crucial to expanding scientific knowledge even though th...

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,...

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...

Through the work we’ve done in ThinkHer, a pattern begins to emerge: a woman’s insistence on shifting what’s accepted as normal. Whether it’s in how they studied, taught, moved through institutions, or lived outside them, these women didn’t just make space for themselves—they redefined what that space could be. Belle da Costa Greene , Mary Somerville , Kamala Sohonie , Rukhmabai Raut —their names resurface time and again, not only for what they achieved, but for how deliberately they lived.  For women, even the most groundbreaking titles rarely ensured entry into the spaces they truly sought. Yet, these women, in their own ways, managed to shape and carve out those very spaces. Laura Maria Caterina Bassi Veratti (Laura Bassi), too, belongs in this line. Portrait of Laura Bassi by Carlo Vandi Laura Bassi’s career began at a time when the very idea of a woman engaging in scientific thought—let alone being recognized for it—was rare and often met with resistance. She was born in 1711 ...