Hypatia of Alexandria

#42/100 of #100extraordinarywomen

Hypatia of Alexandria is not like my usual entry to this blog. But I must confess that Hypatia intrigued me much more than any woman I have already shared about. For one, we are not talking about the 19th or the 20th century here; we are talking about the 4th century. It is amazing that while we women are struggling to make a mark for ourselves in the 20th century, Hypatia stood out among the men and was well respected and acknowledged in 4th century. What is sad though is that, not many could digest that and she suffered for no fault of hers. Still, even to this day, she is revered as "symbol of virtue" even by the Christians who in a way were responsible for her Death. The contemporary Christian historian Socrates of Constantinople described her in his Ecclesiastical History: "There was a woman at Alexandria named Hypatia, daughter of the philosopher Theon, who made such attainments in literature and science, as to far surpass all the philosophers of her own time. Having succeeded to the school of Plato and Plotinus, she explained the principles of philosophy to her auditors, many of whom came from a distance to receive her instructions. On account of the self-possession and ease of manner which she had acquired in consequence of the cultivation of her mind, she not infrequently appeared in public in the presence of the magistrates. Neither did she feel abashed in going to an assembly of men. For all men on account of her extraordinary dignity and virtue admired her the more."

Hypatia of Alexandria was a Greek mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher in Egypt, then a part of the Byzantine Empire. She was the head of the Neoplatonic school at Alexandria, where she taught philosophy and astronomy. This is her story.

One day on the streets of Alexandria, Egypt, in the year 415 or 416, a mob of Christian zealots led by Peter the Lector accosted a woman’s carriage and dragged her from it and into a church, where they stripped her and beat her to death with roofing tiles. They then tore her body apart and burned it. Who was this woman and what was her crime? Hypatia was one of the last great thinkers of ancient Alexandria and one of the first women to study and teach mathematics, astronomy and philosophy. Though she is remembered more for her violent death, her dramatic life is a fascinating lens through which we may view the plight of science in an era of religious and sectarian conflict.

To understand Hypatia, one must first understand Alexandria, the setting, the city, which first bolstered her talent and then destroyed it. Founded by Alexander the Great in 331 B.C., the city of Alexandria quickly grew into a center of culture and learning for the ancient world. At its heart was the museum, a type of university, whose collection of more than a half-million scrolls was housed in the library of Alexandria. Alexandria underwent a slow decline beginning in 48 B.C., when Julius Caesar conquered the city for Rome and accidentally burned down the library. (It was then rebuilt.) By 364, when the Roman Empire split and Alexandria became part of the eastern half, the city was beset by fighting among Christians, Jews and pagans. Further civil wars destroyed much of the library's contents. The last remnants likely disappeared, along with the museum, in 391, when the archbishop Theophilus acted on orders from the Roman emperor to destroy all pagan temples. Theophilus tore down the temple of Serapis, which may have housed the last scrolls, and built a church on the site.

The last known member of the museum was the mathematician and astronomer Theon — Hypatia's father. Some of Theon's writing has survived. His commentary (a copy of a classical work that incorporates explanatory notes) on Euclid's Elements was the only known version of that cardinal work on geometry until the 19th century. But little is known about his and Hypatia's family life. Even Hypatia's date of birth is contested — scholars long held that she was born in 370 but modern historians believe 350 to be more likely. The identity of her mother is a complete mystery, and Hypatia may have had a brother, Epiphanius, though he may have been only Theon's favorite pupil. Theon taught mathematics and astronomy to his daughter, who studied in Athens and who later collaborated on some of his commentaries. It is thought that Book III of Theon's version of Ptolemy's Almagest — the treatise that established the Earth-centric model for the universe that wouldn't be overturned until the time of Copernicus and Galileo — was actually the work of Hypatia.

She was a mathematician and astronomer in her own right, writing commentaries of her own and teaching a succession of students from her home. Around 400, she became head of what is now known as the Neoplatonist School in Alexandria, where she imparted the knowledge of Plato and Aristotle to students, including pagans, Christians, and foreigners. Letters from one of these students, Synesius, indicate that these lessons included how to design an astrolabe, a kind of portable astronomical calculator that would be used until the 19th century. Beyond her father's areas of expertise, Hypatia established herself as a philosopher in the Neoplatonic school, a belief system in which everything emanates from the One. (Her student Synesius would become a bishop in the Christian church and incorporate Neoplatonic principles into the doctrine of the Trinity.) Her public lectures were popular and drew crowds. 

No written work widely recognized by scholars as Hypatia's own has survived to the present time. Many of the works commonly attributed to her are believed to have been collaborative works with her father, Theon Alexandricus. This kind of authorial uncertainty is typical for female philosophers in antiquity. A partial list of Hypatia's works as mentioned by other antique and medieval authors or as posited by modern authors:

• A commentary on the 13-volume Arithmetica by Diophantus.
• A commentary on the Conics of Apollonius of Perga.
• Edited the existing version of Ptolemy's Almagest. "Until recently scholars thought that Hypatia revised Theon's commentary on Almagest. The view was based on the title of the commentary on the third book of Almagest, which read: "Commentary by Theon of Alexandria on Book III of Ptolemy's Almagest, edition revised by my daughter Hypatia, the philosopher." Cameron, who analyzed Theon's titles for other books of Almagest and for other scholarly texts of late antiquity, concludes that Hypatia corrected not her father's commentary but the text of Almagest itself. Thus, the extant text of Almagest could have been prepared, at least partly, by Hypatia".
• Edited her father's commentary on Euclid's Elements.
• She wrote a text "The Astronomical Canon". (Either a new edition of Ptolemy's Handy Tables or commentary on the aforementioned Almagest.)

Her contributions to technology are reputed to include the invention of the hydrometer, used to determine the relative density (or specific gravity) of liquids. However, the hydrometer was invented before Hypatia, and already known in her time. Some say that this is a textual misinterpretation of the original Greek, which mentions a hydroscopium - a clock that works with water and gears, similar to the Antikythera mechanism.

Her student Synesius, bishop of Cyrene, wrote a letter describing his construction of an astrolabe. Earlier astrolabes predate that of Synesius by at least a century, and Hypatia's father had gained fame for his treatise on the subject. However, Synesius claimed that his was an improved model. Synesius also sent Hypatia a letter describing a hydrometer, and requesting her to have one constructed for him.

"Donning [the robe of a scholar], the lady made appearances around the center of the city, expounding in public to those willing to listen on Plato or Aristotle," the philosopher Damascius wrote after her death. Although contemporary fifth-century sources identify Hypatia of Alexandria as a practitioner and teacher of the philosophy of Plato and Plotinus, two hundred years later, the seventh-century Egyptian Coptic bishop John of Nikiû identified her as a Hellenistic pagan and that "she was devoted at all times to magic, astrolabes and instruments of music, and she beguiled many people through her Satanic wiles". However, not all Christians were as hostile towards her and some Christians even used Hypatia as symbolic of Virtue.

Source: Google search and Wikipedia.

Rosalind Franklin

#41/100 in #100extraordinarywomen

British chemist Rosalind Franklin is best known for her role in the discovery of the structure of DNA, and for her pioneering use of X-ray diffraction. She earned a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Cambridge University and learned crystallography and X-ray diffraction, techniques that she applied to DNA fibers. One of her photographs provided key insights into DNA structure. Other scientists used it as evidence to support their DNA model and took credit for the discovery. 

Rosalind Elsie Franklin was born to Ellis Arthur Franklin, a politically liberal London merchant banker, and Muriel Frances Waley into an affluent and influential Jewish family on July 25, 1920, in Notting Hill, London, England. Rosalind was the elder daughter and the second child in the family of five children. She displayed exceptional intelligence from early childhood, knowing from the age of 15 that she wanted to be a scientist. She received her education at several schools, including North London Collegiate School, where she excelled in science, among other things. Rosalind enrolled at Newnham College, Cambridge, in 1938 and studied chemistry. In 1941, she was awarded Second Class Honors in her finals, which, at that time, was accepted as a bachelor's degree in the qualifications for employment. She went on to work as an assistant research officer at the British Coal Utilisation Research Association, where she studied the porosity of coal—work that was the basis of her 1945 Ph.D. thesis "The physical chemistry of solid organic colloids with special reference to coal."

In the fall of 1946, Rosalind was appointed at the Laboratoire Central des Services Chimiques de l'Etat in Paris, where she worked with crystallographer Jacques Mering. He taught her X-ray diffraction, which would play an important role in her research that led to the discovery of "the secret of life"—the structure of DNA. In addition, she pioneered the use of X-rays to create images of crystalized solids in analyzing complex, unorganized matter, not just single crystals.

In January 1951, Rosalind began working as a research associate at the King's College London in the biophysics unit, where director John Randall used her expertise and X-ray diffraction techniques (mostly of proteins and lipids in solution) on DNA fibers. Studying DNA structure with X-ray diffraction, Rosalind and her student Raymond Gosling made an amazing discovery: They took pictures of DNA and discovered that there were two forms of it, a dry "A" form and a wet "B" form. One of their X-ray diffraction pictures of the "B" form of DNA, known as Photograph 51, became famous as critical evidence in identifying the structure of DNA. The photo was acquired through 100 hours of X-ray exposure from a machine Rosalind herself had refined.

John Desmond Bernal, one of the United Kingdom’s most well-known and controversial scientists and a pioneer in X-ray crystallography, spoke highly of Rosalind around the time of her death in 1958. "As a scientist Miss Franklin was distinguished by extreme clarity and perfection in everything she undertook," he said. "Her photographs were among the most beautiful X-ray photographs of any substance ever taken. Their excellence was the fruit of extreme care in preparation and mounting of the specimens as well as in the taking of the photographs."

Despite her cautious and diligent work ethic, Rosalind had a personality conflict with colleague Maurice Wilkins, one that would end up costing her greatly. In January 1953, Wilkins changed the course of DNA history by disclosing without Rosalind's permission or knowledge her Photo 51 to competing scientist James Watson, who was working on his own DNA model with Francis Crick at Cambridge. Upon seeing the photograph, Watson said, "My jaw fell open and my pulse began to race," according to author Brenda Maddox, who in 2002 wrote a book about Rosalind titled Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA.

The two scientists did in fact use what they saw in Photo 51 as the basis for their famous model of DNA, which they published on March 7, 1953, and for which they received a Nobel Prize in 1962. Crick and Watson were also able to take most of the credit for the finding: When publishing their model in Nature magazine in April 1953, they included a footnote acknowledging that they were "stimulated by a general knowledge" of Rosalind's and Wilkins' unpublished contribution, when in fact, much of their work was rooted in Rosalind's photo and findings. Randall and the Cambridge laboratory director came to an agreement, and both Wilkins' and Rosalind's articles were published second and third in the same issue of Nature. Still, it appeared that their articles were merely supporting Crick and Watson's.

According to Maddox, Rosalind didn't know that these men based their Nature article on her research, and she didn't complain either, likely as a result of her upbringing. Rosalind "didn't do anything that would invite criticism … [that was] bred into her," Maddox was quoted as saying in an October 2002 NPR interview. However, she is often also quoted as a victim as well as prime example of sexism in the field of science whereby she was never accorded proper credit for her vast body of work while her male colleagues got all the attention despite openly using her research.

Rosalind left King's College in March 1953 and relocated to Birkbeck College, where she studied the structure of the tobacco mosaic virus and the structure of RNA. Because Randall let Rosalind leave on the condition that she would not work on DNA, she turned her attention back to studies of coal. In five years, Rosalind published 17 papers on viruses, and her group laid the foundations for structural virology. She led pioneering work at Birkbeck on the molecular structures of viruses. Her team member Aaron Klug continued her research, winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1982.

As a person, Rosalind Franklin was best described as an agnostic. Her lack of religious faith apparently did not stem from anyone's influence, rather from her own inquisitive mind. She developed her scepticism as a young child. Her mother recalled that she refused to believe in the existence of god, and remarked, "Well, anyhow, how do you know He isn't She?" She however did not abandon Jewish traditions. As the only Jewish student at Lindores School, she had Hebrew lessons on her own while her friends went to church. She joined the Jewish Society while in her first term at Newnham College, Cambridge, out of respect of her grandfather's request. She confided to her sister that she was "always consciously a Jew". She loved travelling abroad, particularly trekking. She first ventured at Christmas 1929 for a vacation at Menton, France, where her grandfather went to escape English winter. A trip to France in 1938 gave her a lasting love for France and its language. She considered the French lifestyle as "vastly superior to that of English". In another instance, she trekked the French Alps with Jean Kerslake in 1946, which almost cost her her life when she slipped off on a slope, and was barely rescued. She made several professional trips to US, and was particularly jovial among her American friends and constantly displayed her sense of humour. William Ginoza of the University of California, Los Angeles later recalled that she was the opposite of Watson's description of her, and as Maddox comments, Americans enjoyed her "sunny side." She often expressed her political views. She initially blamed Winston Churchill for inciting the war, but later admired him for his speeches. She actively supported Professor John Ryle as an independent candidate for parliament in 1940, but he was unsuccessful. She did not seem to have intimate relationship with anyone and always kept her deepest personal feelings to herself. Since her younger days she avoided close friendship with the opposite sex.

In the fall of 1956, Rosalind discovered that she had ovarian cancer. She continued working throughout the following two years, despite having three operations and experimental chemotherapy. She experienced a 10-month remission and worked up until several weeks before her death on April 16, 1958, at the age of 37. She died four years before the Nobel prize was awarded to Watson, Crick and Wilkins for their work on DNA structure. She never learned the full extent to which Watson and Crick had relied on her data to make their model; if she suspected, she did not express any bitterness or frustration, and in subsequent years she became very friendly with Crick and his wife, Odile. It is clear that, had Franklin lived, the Nobel prize committee ought to have awarded her a Nobel prize, too – her conceptual understanding of the structure of the DNA molecule and its significance was on a par with that of Watson and Crick, while her crystallographic data were as good as, if not better, than those of Wilkins. The simple expedient would have been to award Watson and Crick the prize for Physiology or Medicine, while Franklin and Watkins received the prize for Chemistry. However, the Nobel Committee does not make posthumous nominations and hence Rosalind Franklin’s name was totally ignored at the time of granting the award. 

Source: Google search and Wikipedia.

Shereen Ratnagar

#40/100 in #100extraordinarywomen

Back in the days when archaeology was a developing discipline, it was – like so many things – dominated by men. Or so you would think if you only looked at Wikipedia’s archaeology page. In fact, some of the discipline’s most significant early developments were forged by women. Jane Dieulafoy, Gertrude Bell, Harriet Boyd Hawes, Kathleen Kenyon, Tatiana Proskouriakoff and Jacquetta Hawkes are just a handful of some of the boldest women from the early days of archaeology who were determined to push things forward in new and important ways. In the modern times, one such name that stands out in this excessively male dominated field is that of Shereen Ratnagar.

In the early days of nation building the past was used as a nation-building force. Many notions of Indian civilization had already been projected by the colonial administration and the early Indologists. The Harappan past was then seen through this lens. But how “Indian” was the Indus Valley Civilization, was a question often asked. Could it have been organized on the lines of caste, and could it have been an age without war, as has often been suggested? Shereen Ratnagar, a noted scholar investigating aspects of the Indus Civilization, has tried to answer these very pressing questions through her works. 

Shereen was educated at Deccan College, Pune, University of Pune. She studied Mesopotamian archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. She was a professor of archaeology and ancient history at the Centre for Historical Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. Shereen gave up her Professorship in Archaeology when “it ceased to be fun” and has since been researching and teaching in various places. Her interests include the bronze age, trade, urbanism, pastoralism, and, recently, the social dimensions of early technology. She writes extensively and authoritatively on archaeological matters. Her books are widely read by students, teachers and scholars, of course, but also by the general reader. Her style of writing is friendly and accessible, which makes reading her a pleasure. She retired in 2000, and is currently an independent researcher living in Mumbai. She is noted for work on investigating the factors contributing to the end of the Indus Valley Civilization. She is the author of several texts and her books include ‘Understanding Harappa’ (Tulika, 2006), ‘The End of the Great Harappan Tradition’ (Manohar, 2002), ‘Trading Encounters from the Euphrates to the Indus in the Bronze Age’ (Delhi: Oxford 2004), ‘The Other Indians’ (Delhi: Three Essays 2006) and ‘Makers and Shapers: Early Indian Technology in the Household, Village and Urban Workshop’ (Delhi: Tulika 2007). 

Usually keeping a low profile and fiercely guarding her private life, Shereen came into limelight thanks to the Ayodhya controversy. Shereen along with archaeologist D. Mandal had spent a day, in 2003, examining the excavations conducted by the Archaeological Society of India (ASI) at the site of the Babri Masjid on behalf of the Sunni Waqf Board. Subsequently, the two researchers wrote a highly critical appraisal of the excavations by the ASI titled ‘Ayodhya: Archaeology after Excavation’. In 2010, they appeared as expert witnesses for the Sunni Waqf Board in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid case in the Allahabad High Court. In its judgement on the Ayodhya dispute, the High Court flayed the role played by several witnesses including her, who was forced to admit under oath that she had no field experience in archeological excavations in India. Shereen and her supporters defend her record by stating that she has participated in some archaeological digs at sites outside India, such as Tell al-Rimah, Iraq, in 1971, as well as in Turkey and the Gulf. Earlier in the case, Shereen was also served a contempt notice for violating a court order restraining witnesses in the ongoing case from airing their views in public.

Once again, she recently came into the limelight when Ashutosh Gowarikar’s movie, ‘Mohenjo Daro’, was released and was shrouded in controversy regarding historically inaccurate and politically controversial flashing of horses and the use of heavily Sanskritised dialogues in the film. When the film revived the age-old debate around the Harappan civilization, many journalists reached out to Shereen to gather her views on the controversial issues surrounding the civilisation.

However, controversies or no controversies, it cannot be denied that Shereen is by far an authority on the Harappan civilization and her immense contribution to its study cannot be underestimated. 

Source: Wikipedia and Google search.

Neelam Katara

#39/100 in #100extraordinarywomen

With her battle to get her son’s killers to justice reaching finality before the Supreme Court, Neelam Katara (now about 64 years old) was very recently in the limelight again, as usual decrying honour killings and musclemen-led politics. Neelam feels that losing her son and the the long legal battle has left deep wounds. Her health, family life and finances took a back seat while she fought to get her son’s killers punished. She also joked about whether she would need to ask for more security in the light of the judgment and the sharp remarks she has made against “corrupt” politicians. Her 14-year long fight for justice to prove her son's death was an "honour killing" is well known. A lone woman's fight against a political family with a strong criminal background can make anyone quiver to their knees. "I stayed strong. I wanted to fight for my son who always stood up for others," she said. But in the end, with the recent Supreme Court ruling, she feels that she can now rest in peace and have a normal life again.

Neelam’s son, Nitish Katara, was 23 when he was abducted and murdered by the three convicts as they were opposed to his relationship with Bharti, the sister of convict Vikas Yadav and daughter of Uttar Pradesh politician D P Yadav. The Katara family too was skeptical about the match, but never thought the affair would end like this. They didn’t approve of the relationship but Nitish was sure he wanted to marry Bharti. So, they were trying to respect his decision and all the time wondering and hoping that the affair would end in a while. They never imagined they would lose their son in the wake. The family also had very little time to consider the issue as Nitish informed his parents about his relationship in December 2001. He was killed two months later, in February 2002.

On the fateful night of 16th February 2002, Nitish attended a friends wedding in Ghaziabad along with Bharti. Bharti's mother, her brother Vikas and sister Bhavna were also all there. After the wedding, four people have told the court that they had seen Vikas Yadav and his cousin Vishal Yadav take Nitish into their Tata Safari SUV. His friends thought he would be returning soon, but when they had not returned till well past midnight, Bharat Divakar, who had accompanied Nitish to the wedding in a taxi, went to their house. It was 3 am when Neelam Katara opened the door, and she immediately called Bharti. It turned out that Bharti herself was trying to find out Nitish's whereabouts. She asked Neelam "to go to the police, adding that maybe her brothers – Vikas and Vishal – had taken Nitish to Punjab". Bharti is thought to have called her sister Bhavna Yadav, whose registered mobile phone number was used all night to call many friends of the couple, as well as Neelam Katara. Bharti also gave Neelam her father's number, and after a fruitless visit to the police, at 8 in the morning, Neelam called D. P. Yadav, who did not know where Vikas or Nitish might be. Next morning, the police found a battered and burned body at Khurja, 80 km from the wedding venue. The body had been so badly beaten that "the digestive system had fallen out". At 11 am in the morning, Neelam Katara filed a First Information Report. Based on initial statements by her and Bharti Yadav, warrants were issued for Vikas and Vishal. “The moment I saw that burnt body, I knew it was him. The policemen told me that they couldn’t bear that sight for long but I stood there and kept looking at Nitish’s battered and charred remains. That’s when I decided, I cannot let him die like this. He deserved justice and I would go to any extreme,” she recalls. In her FIR, on the basis of the conversations she had with Nitish's friends while searching for his whereabouts, Neelam set down her deep suspicions that Vikas and Vishal Yadav, Bharti's brothers, who had disapproved of her relationship with Nitish, were involved in the crime. Subsequently, she filed a habeas corpus at the advice of senior Supreme Court woman lawyer, Kamini Jaiswal, who has been her pro-bono legal adviser ever since. What proceeded was years of legal battle, court proceedings, convictions, bails and appeals.

Neelam says, “Had Bharti's brothers not killed Nitish, they would have killed Bharti in the name of caste and honour. ‘Honour killings’ have been a common occurrence. They happen every week in little towns of states like UP, where I was born and brought up.” In fact, Neelam is really unhappy at caste becoming such a major source of divisions in contemporary India. Nitish himself was brought up never to make distinctions based on caste. For the Kataras “caste was purely a phenomenon of medieval times”. “When I came to know about Nitish and Bharti, the only thing I was wary about was that her brother, Vikas, was one of the accused in the Jessica Lal murder case. We did not even know of her father's criminal political background,” she recalls.

An English honours graduate and a pass out from Loreto Convent in Lucknow, Neelam says this courage was ingrained in her by the school. “My teachers had always encouraged us to ask questions. That is what gave me the courage to take on powerful men and defeat them in their own turf. It sure was a perilous journey, but I had to embark upon it. There was no other choice left for me. My husband was dying of a motor neurological disorder and my youngest son was still pursuing his graduation. I had to fight to save our reputation and get justice for my Nitish,” she says. Since then it has been almost 3,000 court visits and rounds of the legal offices to understand where the case was headed. It took her a few years to just come to terms with the legal procedures. But giving up was never an option.

A teacher and education adviser with the Kendriya Vidyala Board at that time, Neelam says teaching was always her first love and she was never interested in climbing the ladder and becoming the principal. She retired as the education officer and is now working with the British Council for the English language assessment arm. “I took a break after the incident, because I couldn’t handle all the running around with the job at hand. At present, I am with the British Council. It keeps me busy. I have to go three days a week and work from home a bit. The going is good,” she says. Although Neelam's father was a police officer with the Uttar Pradesh (UP) police, her maternal grandfather a judge and her paternal grandfather a public prosecutor she, like most ordinary Indians, had no awareness of the way the legal system worked. "In school we are taught science and general knowledge. But no one gives us basic legal knowledge or even legal rights awareness. I think having this information in today's crime ridden times will be a great asset," she states.

Her first visit to the court in Ghaziabad was an eye opener for her. Like most people, Neelam’s knowledge of courts was limited to what she had seen in the movies. Till she landed up in one herself. There were hundreds of men in black robes intimidating people around them. They were abusive, crass and looked like goons to her. The push and shove continued for a few hours before she even made it to the hearing. This slowly became a routine. When her husband died in August 2003, that was the only time that Neelam wanted to give up and take a back seat. “I was slightly de-motivated. We had not expected Nishit to leave like this. He was suffering but he was agile. The stress was a little too much for him. My husband has always been an organised man. He was the plan A, plan B kind of a guy. If we were out on a holiday, he was the sort to reserve two hotels — what if we don’t like the first arrangement? The Nitish case shocked him,” Neelam recalls. A few days after she had decided to let go of the case and simply resign to her fate, politician DP Yadav, the father of the accused, was disowned by his party in just four days after the media raised a hue and cry. “That was my green signal from God. I was not waging this battle on my own,” she says.

In November 2002, when the trials began, things had looked bad. Witness after witness turned hostile. Under immense family pressure, even Bharti denied any involvement with Nitish and left for the UK. The financial drain was severe when in January 2004 the public prosecutor ditched her and she had to hire a private lawyer. This led her to spend most of her husband's retirement benefits. Stress had taken a toll on Neelam. It led her to put on a lot of weight in the first eight years of her battle, which resulted in her developing blood pressure related problems. She then started taking care of herself with medication and regulated her weight. By her side today were her 80-year-old parents in Muzaffarnagar, UP, who she visited for a week every month. But support or no support, Neelam soldiered on.

For a jovial person who had little idea about police stations and court proceedings, Neelam says she took everything as a learning opportunity. “I have had a very protected childhood. But this murder changed me forever. At first, I blindly followed what the Government appointed prosecutor was saying. But I reaslied he was not going to stay much longer. Then another prosecutor came but the moment he dropped Bharti Yadav as a key witness from his list, I knew he was not fighting for us. I had to hire someone and I am glad we took the decision early. When Kamini Jaiswal, the Supreme Court lawyer and my advisor told me to first fight for the case to be shifted to Delhi, I didn’t see where she was going. I had no idea that it would be such a huge step in ensuring justice for my son. Many people congratulated me saying that this was half the battle won!,” she recalls.

Despite the personal loss and the odds stacked against her, Neelam remained a picture of composure all through the battle. She conducted herself with dignity, ignoring grave provocation from the defence side, which launched many personal attacks on her. Though despair and frustration, the gritty mother made sure she was present at all court proceedings. Several times, whenever the prosecution got adverse rulings, she nudged them to move the High Court and even the Supreme Court. Her first victory came on August 23, 2002 when the Supreme Court transferred the trial from a court in Ghaziabad to Delhi on her petition that the powerful accused were influencing the trial. Her role in forcing the prosecution to bring Bharti Yadav from UK to India to depose after she had evaded the court for three years, was critical in the manner the case turned out. However, the biggest disappointment in this battle for her also turned out to be Bharti’s attitude who, she felt let Nitish down big time. “She was in touch with me for the initial three weeks after Nitish was murdered and wrote a lot of confidential emails. But when she finally appeared in the court to give her account she backtracked without battling an eyelid. My son would have never done that. I felt disappointed that Nitish chose her,” she lets her heart out, but maintains her poise throughout.

After the trial court in 2008 convicted Vikas and Vishal Yadav as well as Sukhdev Pehlwan in the murder, legal loopholes created fresh problems for Katara. Requests for parole for the three convicts before the Delhi High Court led to the revelation, via RTI, that the Yadavs had been going in and out of prison for “hospital visits” and “court dates” which stretched far beyond what the rules allow. “There is no implementation of the laws, that’s why the rich and influential people are not scared. Am I supposed to spend my life filing RTIs about whether they are out on parole again?” she says. On the recent Supreme Court order, she says, “This is a milestone judgment.” She hopes that the punishment would “act as deterrent to others” who consider honour killing. “Life imprisonment is a misnomer. In 14 years’ imprisonment, criminals get out of jail even earlier on remission and keep coming out on parole. This judgment of 25 years without remission will be a deterrent,” she says.

Has anything changed for the better in all these years? “Emotionally, I have learnt to move on and be strong around my family. Physically, I have had some problems but they are under control now and socially, I have become more proactive and sensitive to issues concerning women. But when it comes to our legal system, I feel we are still much behind times. There is no witness protection programme in place as yet. There is no counselling for the victim’s family either. The criminal is counselled in the jail but what about the victim’s family? It’s as if it is our fault that our son got murdered,” Katara, who braved many indirect threats when the case was at its peak, says. “I would get weird calls from strangers telling me that they had tried to fight against the Yadavs but all they got in return was more pain and suffering. Sometimes, there were threat notes stuck on their gate and blank calls became a common occurrence. This did not deter me at all. It only told me that I am on the right path,” she says, breaking into a smile. 

“People have said I neglected my younger son because of this case. He now works and lives abroad and never got married. Someone once said it was because of the case and because I didn’t have time for him,” she says. Her youngest son, Nitin who was studying in Pune during the incident is now working for Interpol and is well-settled in this contractual job in the US. “Nitin very much wanted to be a part of the proceedings. He couldn’t believe that his mother would single-handedly manage everything. But I had made up my mind to keep him as far as possible from this matter. The moment he wrapped up his graduation from MIT Pune, I sent him to Leeds for his management degree. The money we got from Nitish’s life insurance was put to good use,” a proud mother tells you. She once said, “Nitin often asks me why all of this had to happen to him. To which I answer, ‘Some people have a perfect youth and a difficult old age like I had, and some have it tough like you in their youth. May be you have a lovely phase hereafter.’” It’s not as if Nitin did not contribute towards this situation at all. He stood as a pillar of support all through the tough times and even now ensures that his mother is occupied. “I visit him often and am happy with the way he has dealt with the entire thing. Nitin has paced his life well,” she says, confiding secretly that she may have not been able to devote a lot of time towards Nitin in his important years but as long as he understands, it’s all well.

Neelam’s inspiring persona has won her many admirers, at work and otherwise. In fact, very often as a member of the Kendriya Vidyalaya Board’s interview panel, she encounters young teachers, who are more delighted to meet her than to be called in for a promotion interview. She advises young people not to get cynical, speak up against injustice and never give up: “You have to be willing to make sacrifices and fight your own case. The rest are just waiting for you to give up.” “Murder for love doesn’t happen. Honour killing can’t be justified in any society. The battle is not over. I will stop only that day when there is a strict law against honour killing,” the crusader for justice, says. Neelam now plans to work towards getting a law against honour killing. She also wants to work spread awareness on Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) - the disease that took her husband's life. There's no doubt, with her steely determination, she will achieve this as well. “I am not a very ritualistic person. However, whenever I have been completely down and out, something shows me the way ahead. ...Maybe that’s God.” That's Neelam Katara for you, a picture of rare courage and quiet optimism. 

Source: Google Search

Jean Batten

#38/100 in #100extraordinarywomen

Google threw an interesting doodle today – Jean Batten’s 107th birthday, it said. Now I was curious, who Jean Batten was. The search made for an interesting read.

Jane Gardner Batten (named "Jane" at birth, her name soon morphed into "Jean") was a New Zealand aviator; born on 15th September 1909 to Frederick Batten, a dental surgeon, and Ellen Batten (who would become her strong supporter in her choice of a piloting career). She had two older brothers.

She was the manifestation of triumph and hope against the odds through the dark days of the Depression. In 1934, she smashed, by six days, Amy Johnson’s flight time between England and Australia. The following year, she was the first woman to make the return flight. In 1936, she made the first ever direct flight between England and New Zealand and then the fastest ever trans-Tasman flight. Jean Batten was the ‘Garbo of the Skies’. She stood for adventure, daring, exploration and glamour. In her time, Jean Batten was one of the most famous people in the world. Jean was born in Rotorua, New Zealand in 1909. A few weeks before her birth, the French pilot Bleriothad become the first man to fly across the English Channel, and Jean’s mother, Ellen, cut out a related newspaper article and pinned it to the wall beside the newborn’s cot. It is difficult to imagine what Ellen had in mind. She was a proto-feminist, an extrovert and a staunch admirer of the suffragettes. Whether Ellen’s ambitions for Jean with the clipping were specific or symbolic, it turned out her daughter was to follow Bleriot to the skies. The clipping was but a sign of things to come. Throughout Jean’s life her mother was to be her single greatest influence. The two were incredibly close. As Jean grew older she developed a mercenary attitude towards men, which was perhaps gleaned from Ellen, whose pride had been hurt by an unfaithful husband. Ellen was a strong, independent woman struggling to assert roles for herself beyond wife and mother.

The family moved from Rotorua to Auckland when Jean was four. Jean’s school and teenage years were a strange and turbulent time. Although she went to a private school and the family were never on the bread line, money was always an issue. This was possibly the effect of World War 1 and later the personal politicking between the warring parents. Since Jean’s birth, the family had been demarcated along gender lines: Ellen, with Jean, against husband Fred and Jean’s brothers. Jean went to the ‘Ladies College’ in Remuera; the boys went to a State school. When the parents finally split in 1920, Ellen took Jean; to her, the boys were Fred’s concern.

Ellen was free-spirited and ambitious, with an aggressive determination that might, in later times, have been described as ‘feminist’. These notions were amplified after her separation from Fred. She instilled in the young Jean the idea, radical for its time, that to succeed in the world she must compete with men in male pursuits. At that time flying was the most daring, dangerous and exciting activity on earth: modern, largely untested and spectacular. It was the most male of male pursuits. Jean’s interest in flying grew. Fred and Jean went to hear Australian ace Charles Kingsford Smith speak at a celebratory dinner in Auckland in 1928, after his flight across the Pacific. Here, she announced to her astounded father and the bemused Australian flying ace (who had stopped to chat to the pretty teenager) “I’m going to learn to fly.”

Jean’s interest became part of the fight between her warring parents. As Mackersey notes, “[Fred] regarded the whole notion [of Jean flying] as preposterous, ‘It’s far too dangerous,’ he said, recalling the many flying accidents he had witnessed on the Western Front,” and implying that such pursuits should be left to the blokes. But Jean had other ideas. On a visit to Australia in 1929, she persuaded Ellen to seek out Kingsford Smith to take her for a flight in the Southern Cross. Ellen agreed, doing everything in her power to support the teenager’s flying aspirations.

In 1930, Jean and Ellen left Auckland for London. The move was ostensibly to further Jean’s musical education (she was a gifted pianist) but London was also the centre of the aviation world. Shortly after her arrival in England Jean joined the London Aeroplane Club and started taking lessons at the Stag Lane aerodrome – gaining her ‘A’ (private) license in December 1931. By this time aviation was past its infancy and women flyers were not unusual. Jean said later that she took to flying ‘like a penguin takes to water’. Other flying pupils at the time remember her differently: ambitious and determined, but a slow learner and terrible at landings. Throughout her apprenticeship, her publicly stated main focus was to be the first person to fly between England and New Zealand. To those around her this notion was patently ridiculous, but she was undeterred. She applied herself assiduously and, after a brief return to New Zealand, gained her commercial license in mid-1931.

Jean was resolute in her determination to complete the flight from England to New Zealand, and to achieve more than ‘just’ this. As Ian Mackersey says, she “had an almost messianic faith in herself, and an unshakeable conviction that she had a significant role to play in putting New Zealand womankind on the map”. With this self-belief and sense of purpose came the notion that it was the duty of others to fund her flights. Despite the later embroided self-depiction of her state of affairs, her own resources were meagre: The post-ware depression hit her father’s Auckland dental practice hard and his allowances to her had dwindled to nothing. She had sold her piano and long since spent the proceeds. But she still managed to fund her way into the sky. Jean was physically attractive and was aware of her allure. On several occasions, besotted men gave her large sums of money for her missions – in the case of Kiwi RAF pilot Fred Truman, his entire life savings. Many were under the impression Jean would marry them. She never married. Jean’s flying skills improved on a parallel with her powers of persuasion. In 1932, she was virtually gifted a second-hand Gipsy Moth bi-plane by the elegant, public-school educated and infatuated Victor Doree, who borrowed the purchase price from his wealthy linen-merchant family. Such patronage was to set Jean on the way to achieving all her aspirations for fame and success.

Jean had won her commercial license, but was not interested in merely making flying her job. She wanted to break records. She wanted to be the object of adulation. In 1933, she left England to fly to Australia. English aviatrix, Amy Johnson, had made it in 20 days, three years earlier and Jean had to break that record. She wanted to make it in 14 days. It didn’t happen on the first attempt, engine failure in India bringing the mission to an untimely end. This was the first time Jean had flown away from England and the first time she had flown over the sea or the desert, which were no small feats in the tiny, flimsy bi-plane. But for Jean Batten it was failure and a pot-hole on the road to destiny. Her second attempt ended even closer to England. She ran out of petrol over Italy and had to make a dangerous emergency landing between Rome and Marseilles. With the plane slightly damaged in the landing she was grounded in Italy for a week, thus destroying any chance of breaking Amy Johnson’s record. She returned to England. Jean took off again on May 8th 1934: destination Australia. Battling the elements, she reached Darwin in 14 days and 22 hours, not quite a day longer than her stated goal but smashing Amy Johnson’s time by five days. She even flew back to England from Australia, the first woman to make the return flight. She gave talks and attended receptions in her honour. She was employed to give talks accompanying an RAF recruitment film – an unprecedented move, as at that time such employment was a bastion of male privelege.

Thanks to earnings from her two successful flights – proceeds of her overflowing lecture/cinema tours, fees from Gaumont British and the Express, and a major endorsement deal with Castrol (advertisements with Jean’s image began to appear with the slogan “If there were a better oil than Wakefield Castrol I would use it”) – Jean was able to upgrade the Gipsy Moth. With the help of a generous cheque of £1000 from Lord Wakefield after her Australia flight, she bought a Percival Gull monoplane. With its lightweight metal propeller, hydraulic brakes (the Moth had no brakes), an automatic petrol pump, landing flaps, a 200 hp engine and an extra fuel tank, the Gull was the machine Jean would break new records in.

Now very much the object of public fascination in England, Australia and New Zealand, Jean was preparing for another long-distance flight; this time across the South Atlantic between West Africa and Brazil. The record time for the route, 85 hours and 20 minutes, was held by Scotsman, Jim Mollison. Jean took off from France for Casablanca on November 11, 1935, landing at her destination nine and a half hours later – an unintentional record. Then on to Thies in Senegal, from where she would leave for South America. Freak storms over the Equator made the Gull’s instruments go haywire and, with the compass out of action, Jean was convinced she was off course. It was only when the weather cleared and she saw cargo vessels on shipping routes that she knew she was heading in the right direction. She made Port Natal, Brazil, in 61 hours and 15 minutes, almost a day faster than Mollison.

The receptions she had been honoured with in Australia and New Zealand were repeated in South America, taking the levels of hero worship to new heights. In Brazil she was awarded the Order of the Southern Cross, an honour never before given to a member of the British Empire who was not of royal birth. She was made an honorary member of the air force in three countries and ‘the dashing and fearless aviator’ was rushed by crowds of well-wishers everywhere she went. She was, by now, one of the most famous aviatrixes in the world and the public waited anxiously for the announcement of her next feat. They were not to be disappointed. It was a flight from England to Auckland: across the world to the edge of the Empire. She took off on the 5th of October 1936. It was 3.30am when, bathed in autumn moonlight she walked out to her aeroplane, but there was already an enormous crowd of reporters, newsreel cameramen, photographers and fans gathered to see her off. As she crossed the English Channel, the frightening enormity of the flight dawned on her: 14,000 miles, including 1300 miles over the treacherous Tasman.

The Percival Gull performed brilliantly. She made Australia in six days, which was less than half the time it had taken in the Gipsy Moth three years earlier, setting a new solo record. Her second touchdown in Sydney rivalled her first as adoring crowds came out en masse. Not content to merely fly across the world, Jean made sure she was always glamorous, so fostering and encouraging the popular perception of her as ‘the Garbo of the Skies’. She always brought evening dresses with her for receptions and would emerge from the cockpit after long flights wearing makeup and dressed in a white flying suit.

Although Australia wanted her to stay, she was determined to cross the Tasman. In the days leading up to her departure she had been criticised in a newspaper editorial for undertaking the flight because of the time and money it would cost to rescue her if she crashed. She replied with a short statement designed, through gallantry and sacrifice, to override the pettiness of the original criticism: “If I go down in the sea no one must fly out and look for me. I have chosen to make this flight, and I am confident I can make it, but I have no wish to imperil the lives of others or cause trouble or expense to my country.” She took off at 4.40 am, October 16, 1936. The flight took 10 and a half hours, during which time thousands on both sides of the Tasman held their breath, waiting between regular news updates of her flight. She said later that she almost “lost her nerve” flying across the Tasman. Encountering terrible weather, she was convinced she was off course. She did not see land until she was almost over it, and before she reached the Taranaki coast she had practically given up hope, despite her instruments telling her she was still on course. News of Jean’s touchdown at Auckland airport caused 13 miles of traffic jams as New Zealanders welcomed home their adventurous daughter. Returning to her birth place of Rotorua, she was once again guest of honour of local Maori, as she had been after the 1934 journey. She was gifted a chief’s feather cloak and given the title Hine-o-te-Rangi – “Daughter of the Skies”.

After several months rest in New Zealand and Australia, she flew back to England. She made the trip in five days and 18 hours; she now held the world record in both directions. Yet she had decided that this would be her last long distance flight. She was happy with her achievements, and the flying world also recognised what she had achieved. In 1938, she was awarded the medal of the Federation Aeronautique Internationale, aviation’s highest honour, being the first woman to receive it. 

World War Two ended her flying adventures. Her Gull was commissioned to active service but Batten was not permitted to fly it. During the war she was involved in campaigns giving lectures in England to raise money for guns and aeroplanes, but her flying days were over. After the war she retired from public life except for a few anniversary appearances. There is some mystery as to why she was never accepted into the Air Transport Auxiliary. Possibly it was due to double vision incurred in an earlier crash, or perhaps because she wasn’t a team player. Whatever it was, the war signalled the end of Jean’s long distance flying adventures, and the end of Jean in the public eye. After the war she lived in Jamaica and then Spain. She continued to live with Ellen until her mother’s death in 1965, the devotion of both women growing stronger with the years. 

Jean Batten’s last visit to New Zealand was in 1977 where she was guest of honour at the opening of the Aviation Pioneers Pavilion at Auckland’s Museum of Transport and Technology in Auckland. It would be the last time many heard of her. After the visit she returned to Spain, living a quiet, reclusive existence; but the influence of Ellen would stay with her the rest of her life. Because of her reclusiveness in later life, it was over a year before those who had kept up some form of correspondence with Jean, on not hearing from her, began to worry. It was 1983. In 1982 she had been bitten by a dog on the island of Majorca. She refused treatment and the wound became infected. She died alone in a hotel on Majorca, from complications from the dog bite, and was buried on 22nd January 1983. She was buried under her middle name, Gardner, in a pauper's grave in Majorca in 1983 - she'd only been there for a week and they didn't know who she was - and it wasn't discovered until five years later. Thus the world, and her relatives, did not learn of her passing until September 1987 when at the instigation of Batten’s London publisher, Bob Pooley, some cursory investigations were advanced by the New Zealand Government. These inquiries and those of her remaining family were slowed by a real concern not to invade Batten’s private world, and they proved fruitless. Despite some media speculation about her whereabouts, it would take four and half years and the tireless detective work of documentary film-makers Ian and Caroline Mackersey, to uncover the mystery and bureaucratic obfuscation that hid Batten’s lonely death. It was an tragic demise that could only serve to further the Batten legend. A plaque now rests on the wall above the ignominious paupers’ grave where she is buried. The Times (London) paid tribute to her fame and daring in a major obituary, and Auckland International Airport bears her name.

Not only her beauty and stellar celebrity, but also her eccentric and withdrawn habits had come to mirror her cinematic counterpart, Greta Garbo. She became known as the "Greta Garbo of the skies". In October 2008 a musical “Garbo of the Skies” written by Paul Andersen-Gardiner and Rebekah Hornblow had its inaugural performance in Opunake by the Opunake Players at the Lakeside Playhouse. It was based on Ian Mackersey's biography.

Jean Batten took New Zealand from the edge – “A magnificent woman and her flying machine.” – With determination and skill she took on the elements in a dynamic and unexplored new technology, in the process making the world seem smaller, and linking New Zealand with that world in a more tangible way than ever before. She captured the imagination of an age and her feats of daring broke barriers of distance, time and gender.

Source: NZedge.com, Wikipedia and basic Google search

Dipa Karmakar

#37/100 in #100extraordinarywomen

Dipa Karmakar is an artistic gymnast who represented India at the 2016 Summer Olympics. She is the first Indian female gymnast ever to compete in the Olympics, and the first Indian gymnast to do so in 52 years. She attained 4th position in Women's Vault Gymnastics event of Rio Olympics 2016 with an overall score of 15.066. She first gained attention when she won a bronze medal at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, becoming the first Indian female gymnast to do so in the history of the Games. She is being supported by the GoSports Foundation under the Rahul Dravid Athlete Mentorship Programme. She also won a bronze medal at the Asian Gymnastics Championships and finished fifth at the 2015 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, both firsts for her country. For her wonderful performance in Rio Olympics 2016, the government of India conferred upon her the Khel Ratna Award in August 2016.

Dipa was born on 9th August 1993 to a Bengali family hailing from Agartala in Tripura. She started practicing gymnastics when she was 6 years old and has been coached by Soma Nandi & Bisweshwar Nandi since then. When she began gymnastics, she had flat feet, an undesirable physical trait in a gymnast because it affects their performance. Through extensive training, she was able to develop an arch in her foot. In 2008, she won the Junior Nationals in Jalpaiguri. Since 2007, Dipa has won 77 medals, including 67 gold, in state, national and international championships. She was part of the Indian gymnastics contingent at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, where Ashish Kumar won India's first-ever Commonwealth Games gymnastics medal. 

Dipa competed in the 2011 National Games of India, representing Tripura. She won gold medals in the all-around and all four events: floor, vault, balance beam and uneven bars. At the 2014 Commonwealth Games, Dipa won a bronze medal in the women's vault final, thanks largely to her Produnova vault, which has a difficulty value of 7.00. She received an average two-vault score of 14.366. She was the first Indian woman to win a Commonwealth Games gymnastics medal, and the second Indian overall, after Ashish Kumar. At the 2014 Asian Games, Karmakar finished fourth in the vault final with a score of 14.200, behind Hong Un-jong, Oksana Chusovitina, and Phan Thị Hà Thanh. After the competition, she said, "See, the two top girls here are the gold and silver medalists in the Olympics, while the third girl was bronze winner at the World Championships. So I'm more than happy that I gave them a good fight and finished fourth here." At the Asian Championships, held in Hiroshima from July 31–August 2, Dipa won the bronze in women's vault while finishing 8th on balance beam. In October 2015, she became the first Indian gymnast to qualify for a final stage at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships. She scored 14.900 on vault in the qualification round to secure her place for the finals, where she finished 5th with a two-vault average of 14.683. 

On 10th August 2016 at the 2016 Olympic Test Event, Dipa Karmakar became the first female gymnast from India to qualify for the final vault event at the Olympics, with a score of 14.833. She narrowly missed out in the bronze medal, finishing 4th in the finals of the event with a score of 15.066 on 14 August 2016 at the Gymnastics Center in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil where Simone Biles won Gold.

Dipa is only the fifth woman in gymnastics history to land the Produnova vault, or the handspring double front. The Produnova* is an artistic gymnastics vault consisting of a front handspring onto the vaulting horse and two front somersaults off. The vault currently has a 7.0 D-score, and is the hardest vault performed in women's artistic gymnastics. This vault also known as the “Vault of death”, and not without a reason. A BBC News package begins with Dipa’s chilling statement: “One wrong move and I could die on the spot.” Nobody has ever died doing the Produnova but it’s not a far-fetched exaggeration. The possibility of a serious injury is real if the gymnast does not land properly on her feet or if the twists go horribly wrong. In the latter scenario, you could land on your head, your back or in some other awkward position. A poorly executed move left the Soviet Union gymnast Elena Mukhina a quadriplegic in the 1970s. So, why did Dipa chose it? An upbringing in a family of limited economic means puts you far, far away from an Olympic medal in gymnastics. If you are distanced from the margins of elite sport, you don’t get anywhere without taking risks imbued with the greatest dangers. The structural limitations are far too big to be surmounted by two front somersaults. This is why Dipa kept going even when an injured ankle threatened to hold her back at the Commonwealth and Asian Games two years ago. Her path to participation at the Olympics demanded a battle with pain that distorts the ideal sport seems to promote. The public perception is that sport is good for us. It keeps us healthy. Tell that to someone doing the “vault of death”. When asked whether she would ever attempt the Produnova, the current-day darling of gymnastics Simone Biles told The New Yorker, “I’m not trying to die.” Many other gymnasts view the move with similar apprehension. No wonder then that it is rated so highly. However, the level of difficulty involved in carrying it out means that judges may score gymnasts attempting it leniently. In fact, there have been suggestions that the Produnova is set to be marked down severely soon in order to discourage gymnasts. The considerable risk has meant that there have been many detractors. But, still there are some gymnasts, like Dipa, who try this risky vault as it guarantees them seven points because of the difficulty level and even faulty execution gives them a shot at a medal. Nevertheless, the inherent risks in Dipa’s daring skill move, of course, hold little fears for her. Such is the level of her mastery, and which we were fortunate to sample in Rio. She told the Wall Street Journal, “Now it’s the easiest vault for me. I hope this vault becomes more famous than me in India. The vault is very dangerous. I say, ‘Thank you, I like risk.’ ”

Dipa now will train for 2020 Tokya Olympics. And since it is rest period for Dipa, she and her coach are found here every evening, carefully examining the many future gymnasts in the making.

Source: Wikipedia and Google search.

*P.S. As a trivia on the sidelines of the above article, the Produnova is named after Yelena Produnova, also known as Elena, a former competitive gymnast from Russia, whose senior international career lasted from 1995 to 2000, and earned her multiple world and Olympic medals except gold which somehow always eluded her. She is known for her innovative and powerful skills on the vault and floor exercise and is one of the few gymnasts to have skills on all four events named after her:

Apparatus	Name	Description	Difficulty
Vault	Produnova	Handspring double front salto	7.0
Uneven bars	Produnova	Uprise/clear hip to handstand, half turn to L or mixed L grip	C
Balance beam	Produnova	Jump forward with 1/2 twist to back pike salto	E
Floor exercise	Produnova	Split leap with a full turn to land in a split	C

Source: Wikipedia

Melody McCloskey

#36/100 in #100extraordinarywomen

In San Francisco, Melody McCloskey stands out as a rare woman in the land of tech start-ups. She has raised some $14 million in venture capital for StyleSeat, an online booking platform for salon professionals that she founded in 2011 along with Dan Levine, a developer. Today, some 260,000 stylists in the US use the platform, and the company employs 31 people.

But Melody’s career in tech was nearly derailed in 2002, back when she was a high school student in suburban San Francisco and she took an advanced placement course in computer science, something of an introduction to coding. “I have always loved computers and I’ve always loved tech,” she said. “I was really excited about it.” Melody, who studied ballet until growing too tall, brought a dancer’s discipline to her studies. “The coursework wasn’t harder than any of my other A.P. courses,” she said. “But I was the only woman in the class.” And right away, she said, “there was all this tension and attention present because of that. All the guys either wanted to talk to me or didn’t want me to be there.”

As an adult, she might have been able to handle that, but as a high school student, she said, “it added extra pressure that I didn’t feel in any of my other classes.” Ultimately, she decided to drop the course — and tech all together, at least for a while. She majored in international relations and French at the University of California, Davis, where she said a counsellor advised her to pursue public relations: “You’re a girl — you have great social skills.” Melody did try public relations after graduating but didn’t like it. Then, she took a job managing online content for Current, the now-defunct television channel. “I was helping to build all the back-end C.M.S.” — the content management system — “like really nerdy stuff,” she said. “It was really fun.”

As is common in the San Francisco Bay Area, she began hanging out with start-up founders and other people in tech. “A lot of my friends were talking about raising money, building minimum viable products and how to get the best engineering talent,” she said, which made her think about starting a business. After a series of disappointing haircuts, she came up with the idea for StyleSeat, a platform where consumers can search for stylists, read reviews and book appointments, something of a Yelp-meets-OpenTable for hair salons and spas. She came up with the idea for StyleSeat more from the consumer’s perspective. She is not from the beauty industry and she didn’t know a lot about the industry either. StyleSeat is a platform for stylists, aestheticians, makeup artists, nail artists to run their entire business. It gives them a website with online booking; it also manage all their client relationships; and it also gives them a mobile app so they can run everything from their phone.

Melody then found a developer to write a program and roped in a friend to design the site. Once she had a prototype, Melody contacted a former colleague and software engineer, Dan Levine. “I said, ‘I’d love for you to be my co-founder. This is the vision. What do you think?’ And he said yes. And I was like, ‘Okay, but you’re gonna have to quit your job, and actually I can’t pay you. I have no money, and we’ll probably have to bootstrap.’ And he said yes. And I was like, ‘Well, maybe you should think about it a little bit. Like we might need some investment from you to get this going.’ And he’s like. ‘Yes. I already said yes.’”

Melody and Dan started StyleSeat in 2010. They worked in the time-honoured tech start-up way – Seven days a week — with no pay. They ended up bootstrapping for the first year and a half of the business. And that certainly wasn’t because they didn’t want to raise money. It was because raising money was a huge challenge for them. The vast majority of investors are male. And so they were not much interested in the ideas of a woman who comes in with this app that’s not just really focused on female entrepreneurs but also caters to primarily the needs of women. And so much feedback initially was that women do not really want this or need this since they are not much tech savvy. Most also believed that the stylists and salon owners were not going to use technology. 

One early backer was Garrett Camp, a friend and the chairman of ride-sharing service Uber, who invested $10,000. To get stylists to use the service, she invited them to parties, where she offered free Champagne and showed PowerPoint presentations on how to use StyleSeat. Finally, after Melody and Dan pitched StyleSeat at Tech Crunch Disrupt, they raised $700,000 from investors, including Ashton Kutcher. They hired a team, built out the platform and attracted users. The user base tripled in a year, she said, attracting other high-profile investors like Sophia Bush and Guy Oseary. Since its launch, StyleSeat has recorded more than $500 million in bookings, and it now operates in 15,000 cities in the US. Melody and Dan have raised another $14 million to keep growing the site.

Thinking back to high school, Melody said she regretted dropping out of computer science, but she’s glad the experience didn’t stop her from pursuing a career in tech. Not many women can say the same. A number of research studies have found that college-bound women interested in science, technology, math and engineering — the STEM subjects — often encounter bias from faculty members and either choose or are steered into other fields, such as arts and the humanities. Women hold less than 25 percent of all STEM jobs, according to Commerce Department data. Still, some schools are creating programs to attract women to tech and since then, it has seen a substantial increase in female computer science graduates.

Melody said she would have kept up her studies if there had been more support, like a “Women Joining Computer Science Club” at school. Young girls face a discouragement that is far more subtle than “take away the calculator and give them a Barbie,” she said. Rather, “it’s more the ecosystem not being particularly favourable to girls,” she said. “No one turned to me and said, ‘You can be a software engineer.’”

Melody now mentors and helps young and “unlikely” entrepreneurs bypass common startup mistakes and accelerate quickly. Her personal story, of experiencing discouragement and failure in her initial computer science studies, to achieving her vision of becoming a successful tech entrepreneur, is truly inspiring.

Source: NY Times blogs and storyexchange.org