Google paid homage to Indian physicist and meteorologist Anna Mani on August 23, 2022. She was one of the country’s first female scientists. Anna Mani is also known as the ‘weather woman of India’. Google Doodle celebrated her 104th birthday with a special graphic.

Anna Mani was born on August 23, 1918, in Peermade, Kerala. She was an avid reader. She spent her formative years immersed in books. By the age of 12, she had read almost all the books at her public library.

After completing high school, she did her Intermediate Science course at Women’s Christian College (WCC). She graduated with a B.Sc honours degree in physics and chemistry from Pachaiyappa’s College, Madras. 

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She won a scholarship for research at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. She worked under the guidance of CV Raman researching the optical properties of diamonds and rubies. Between 1942 and 1945 Anna Mani published five papers and submitted her PhD dissertation, but was not awarded a PhD degree because she did not have a Master’s degree in physics. 

In 1945, she went to Imperial College, London and specialized in meteorological instruments. She joined the Meteorological department in Pune in 1948. She authored numerous research papers on meteorological instrumentation. By 1953, she became the head of the division with a staff of 121 working under her. 

Her wish to make India independent in weather instruments, made her standardize the drawings of almost 100 weather instruments. From 1957-58 she worked to set up a network of stations to measure solar radiation. 

In Bangalore, she set up a small workshop that manufactured instruments for the purpose of measuring wind speed and solar energy. She also worked on the development of an apparatus to measure ozone and became a member of the International Ozone Association. She worked to set up a meteorological observatory and an instrumentation tower at the Thumba rocket launching facility. 

Anna Mani was associated with National Science Academy, American Meteorological Society, International Solar Energy, World Meteorological Organization (WMO), and International Association for Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics. 

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She worked as the Deputy Director General in 1969 in Delhi. In 1975, she served as a WMO consultant in Egypt. She retired as the Deputy Director General of the Indian Meteorological Department in 1976. In 1987, she won the INSA K.R. Ramanathan Medal for her remarkable contribution to science.

She passed away in 1994 after suffering from a stroke.