Today I’m going to be talking about a scientist who travelled the world, defied societal expectations,
and performed important scientific work: E.K. Janaki-Ammal.
Ammal was born on November 4th, 1897 to a large, middle class family. She attended school
in Tellichery, a town on the Western coast of India, more commonly known as Thalassery.
She received her Bachelor’s degree from Queen Mary’s College in 1921, and her Master’s
degree from the University of Michigan in 1925. She went on to get her Doctorate in
Michigan as well, in 1931, but alongside all of this schooling, she taught at universities
in both India and the USA. She was obviously a very driven person, dedicated to her teaching
and learning.
In 1934, she joined C.A. Barber and T.S. Venkatraraman at the Sugarcane Breeding Institute in Coimbatore.
During her five years there, she contributed to their research creating new varieties and
hybrids of sugarcane. Ammal created several sugarcane hybrids, including Saccharum x Zea,
and Saccharum x Erianthu. Unfortunately, correspondence of hers from the time tells us that she faced
extensive discrimination and jealousy from her male superiors.
Ammal then moved on the UK, though perhaps not intentionally. She travelled there in
1939 for the Seventh International Genetical Congress, but the start of World War II made
her unable to return to India. So instead she remained in the U.K. and worked. She co-wrote
The Chromosome Atlas of Cultivated Plants, which was published in 1945. She also had
an interest in ethnobotany and medicinal plants, and studied plants in those areas. Her work
during this time reflected her wide interests across the plant kingdom.
She returned to India in 1948, and became very involved in the evolving scientific establishment
there. She lead the reorganization of the botanical survey of India, though that was
not without its challenges. She retired in 1959, but went on to the lead the botany wing
at a Laboratory in Jammu, Kashmir. There is a herbarium in Jammu that bears her name,
and holds 25,000 species of Indian plants.
Ammal had so many accomplishments during her life that I cannot list them all. If you’d
like to hear more detail about her life, please check out some of the sources in the description,
which can provide more detail. She performed important botanical scientific research during
a time when single women were not often encouraged to do so, though she was fortunate to come
from an enlightened and supportive family.
But as with most people, Ammal’s success came with a dark side-she became a eugenicist.
She lived during a time in which genetics was becoming more and more prominent, and
this had the unfortunate side effect of also feeding the eugenics movement. For those unfamiliar,
eugenics is a belief that humanity can be 'improved' via selective breeding, sterilisation
and abortion. It is an abhorrent movement, because it is premised on dehumanising members
of marginalised groups including people of colour, the poor, and the disabled. Eugenics
is what led to Nazi sterilisation and murder programs during the 1930s.So in case it isn’t
clear, this is not a good movement to be involved with.
Ammal’s coauthor on The Chromosome Atlas of Cultivated Plants was C.D. Darlington,
a prominent eugenicist . They were lifelong friends, despite Darlington’s ongoing racism
and criticism of Ammal’s work, and Ammal regularly gave Darlington information about
India and its caste system for his research. Ammal also joined the Eugenics Society in
1931, and appeared to maintain a lifelong interest in eugenics. So while we can admire
the important botanical work she did during her life, we should also acknowledge that
she contributed to a community that promoted racism and genocide.
Later in life, Ammal devoted much of her time to environmental activism, in order to preserve
the flora and fauna of India. She contributed to the fight against the construction of a
dam in the Silent Valley, which would have flooded a diverse natural area there. The
project was canceled in response to the public outcry, and that area was declared a National
Park in 1985.
Ammal passed away in February of 1984, and she was working her lab until she died. I
quite like a quote from a biography of her life by C. V. Subrmanian, which I’ve linked
in the description. “She lived up to her own definition of greatness which combined
virtue in life and passion in the pursuit of her science. There is thus much for us
to emulate in her life and work.”
I hope you enjoyed hearing about the life of this botanist. If there’s a botanist
you’d like to see me feature in a future video, please let me know in the comments.
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much for watching, and I’ll see you next week.