Prem Mathur

#58/100 in #100extraordinarywomen

Long ago there were not that many pilots in India, the reason being women were not encouraged to get in to that field, which was considered as male's domain. But, nowadays numerous Indian women work as pilots both in the private and public airline companies. Initially women were working in the cabin, taking care of the passenger's needs. Today they made a big jump from the cabin to the cockpit. It all started with one Prem Mathur whose continued efforts and passion made her become the first Indian woman commercial pilot in 1951, exactly 4 years after India's freedom from the British. Indeed a great feat in those years of conservatism and restricted movements for Indian women. Above in the Indian sky, woman in the cockpit was unthinkable in the 1940s and 1950s. Certainly in the area of commercial flying Prem Mathur was a trailblazer.

After receiving the pilot's flying license in 1947 from Allahabad Flying Club, her ambition was to join a commercial airliner as a pilot. Incidentally, she was first Indian woman to have received a commercial pilot's license in India. In the initial stages, the results were not encouraging, she kept receiving a barrage of regret letters from the commercial airline companies. The commercial airliners, it is said, did not want to take risk by employing women pilots. Their excuse was the passengers won't be comfortable sitting in the airliner with women in the cockpit. This kind of misconception was very much there and it was rooted in the fact that women won't as quickly respond to emergency situation as men would do. Simply speaking, women pilots were not good enough to handle a real emergency situation that might develop while flying as it was different from handling emergency situation in a simulated environment on the ground.

As for Prem, that was not the end of the world. Now she became even more serious about joining a commercial airliner at any cost and her positive approach coupled with sincere efforts, at last, paid off. Deccan Airways of Hyderabad at the interview asked her all kinds of questions about sophisticated electronic and mechanical control and being knowledgeable as she was, initially she was hired as a co-pilot in 1951; after having won the air race in 1949 conducted by the Aero Club. 

However, the company was reluctant to giver her full command of the cockpit even after fulfillment of the required hours of flying by her. While with Deccan, she had the opportunity to fly distinguished personalities like Lal Bahadur Shastry, Indira Gandhi, Lady Mountbatten etc. A disappointed Prem left the job and later became a pilot of well-known industrialist G. D. Birla's private aircraft and was stationed in Delhi. After a short stint with Mr. Birla, she joined the joined Indian Airlines as a pilot in 1953, the National Domestic Airline came into operation with the amalgamation of many private airlines. On 2nd October 1953, Capt. Prem Mathur started flying as Co-pilot with Indian Airlines and India became the first country in the world to employ a woman as a pilot in their IATA Airline Ltd. Till retirement she had a distinguished carrier with the Indian Airlines.

As a courageous woman, she chased her dream and accomplished her passion.

Source: Google search.

Dr. T. S. Kanaka

#57/100 in #100extraordinarywomen

When Thanjavur Santhanakrishnan Kanaka, more popularly known as T.S. Kanaka, opted for a career in neurosurgery way back in the 1960s, little did she realise that she was embarking on a challenging journey. It was a struggle back then as she broke the male bastion several times over, first as a student and later as a surgeon. “Getting a master's degree in general surgery was not easy for me,” Dr. Kanaka recalls with a sparkle in her eyes. “Women were never admitted to master's programme in general surgery. Two other women had been admitted to the M.S. general surgery simply because they had won the Johnson Medal (the highest recognition for a student at Madras Medical College). While one went on to become an anatomy professor, the other never practised. When I applied for the MS programme, I was told I would never be accepted.”

Kanaka was one of eight children born to Santhanakrishna and Padmavathi in Madras on March 31, 1932. Her father was the Deputy Director of Public Instruction and Principal of Madras Teachers College. Despite an urge to pursue spiritual studies in her early years, she went on to study medicine. Born in an era when women were not even allowed to pursue their studies, the young doctor was taking the bold steps towards getting a master’s degree in surgery. No words can explain her struggle to make her mark in this highly male dominated profession.She once explained in an interview, “I was born along with four sisters and three brothers of which only one sister is alive, apart from me. All of them were highly educated. Given that we belonged to 40s and 50s, it’s a huge thing. My youngest sibling was Amarnath who died at a very young age. He, being the last one, was the dearest to the family. So, I have named this house after him. I didn’t want to get married because I wanted to involve myself completely into my profession. My mother understood my situation and accepted it. But my father, like any other father, wanted to get me married. But you see, back then the crucial decisions of the family belonged to the woman of the family. They appeared as subordinates but always the woman’s words went in the house. These days we are talking about female equality, but back then there was female superiority (she laughed) though it’s all changed now.” 

Known for her passion for academics, Dr. Kanaka embarked on research even as a medical student at MMC. She undertook several research projects during the third and fourth year of MBBS, a rare feat for an undergraduate student. But that did not make her journey any easy. She finally got her way and was admitted to the MS course as the only woman among the eight students. 

Even post her admission into the degree course, she was not given the permission to watch emergencies and her teachers where highly skeptical of giving her the knife or scalpel. The agony did not end there. Every time she wrote the exam the examiner failed her. But she not give up. She passed the MS examination on her sixth attempt by fighting every possible tooth and nail. From here young Dr. Kanaka’s journey took her to serve the Indian Army as an officer-surgical specialist. But unfortunately, due to a prolonged lingering illness she could not pursue the post for long. After her health improvement, she returned back to Madras Medical College and joined the neurosurgical wing, dreaming to become a neurosurgeon. The post of an assistant to a surgeon did not come easily either. She turned lucky when an assistant surgeon had to go on leave for training and she was posted in his place. It was under Dr. A. Venugopal that she formally became a surgeon. Later neurosurgeon Dr. B. Ramamurthy's tutorship helped her hone her skills. Under the guidance and teachings of a few esteemed surgeons who sharpen her skills and knowledge, helped her become the first few women neurosurgeons of the world.

Struggles were aplenty even after this. Her academic papers were scrutinised by fellow researchers in the United States. Today, Dr. Kanaka is among the handful of women neurosurgeons who have set an example for other women. Her favourite subject is deep brain stimulation, and she has presented several papers on it. During her several lecture tours in India, she has impressed upon scientists to develop deep brain stimulation kits locally, but says she has not succeeded. The kit is used in stereotaxic surgeries. “My job is not done until India develops its own kit for cost-effective treatment,” says Dr. Kanaka, who remained single to devote herself to medicine. 

Over the years, her zeal and thirst for the subject have inspired her to conduct comprehensive research in the field of neurosurgery. An expert in the field of brain simulation, Dr. Kanaka has dedicated her entire life to the field of medicine. With many accolades to her credit, the one striking one, is that , she is known to be an active blood donor all her life. She was formerly listed in the Limca Book of Records for the highest number of blood donations by an individual. As of 2004 she was noted to have donated blood 139 times.

By the way, she doesn’t stop there . Her hands are currently full with a pet project of designing an implantable deep brain stimulation kit that would act like a boon for cerebral palsy patients. A humanist at heart, she is also quiet active at Sri Santhanakrishna Padmavathi Health Care & Research Centre, which stands tall on a plot adjoining her home. Named after her parents, the center conducts various talks on health thereby creating awareness on medical problems.

Currently, Dr Kanaka, under her parents’ name, also runs a trust and a healthcare wellness cum research centre near her house at Chromepet in Chennai. When she retired, she wanted to build an old age home with her retirement money. She went for help to HelpAge India. The person said, “You were literally living in your office at the hospital for 40 years now; you cannot run a home. Think of something else.” She kept thinking throughout her train journey back home and that was what served as her Bodhi tree. She established a ‘wellness centre’. She has a clinic where she listens to the problems of the elderly. They have simple problems like memory defects, insomnia, drowsiness, giddiness, fatigue, tremors, unsteady gait, falls, pain, urinary incontinence etc, which seem very unnoticeable problems to the youngsters in their family and the young doctors. They need someone they could talk to about their problems. She’s doing that. Now that she’s in their age she can understand their problems.

Undoubtedly, she is an aspiration for every person and holds a special place in the heart of womanhood. 

Source: Google search and Wikipedia.

Maryam Mirzakhani

#56/100 in #100extraordinarywomen

In 2014, Maryam Mirzakhani, then 37-years-old, a mathematician working at Stanford University, became the first woman, and only woman till date, as well as the first Iranian to win the Fields Medal since its inception in 1936. The Fields Medal is awarded to mathematicians under 40 who have made outstanding contributions to mathematics that hold future promise. She was one of four winners of the Fields medal, which is considered the mathematics equivalent of the Nobel prize. She was named for her work on complex geometry and dynamic systems. Her death, on July 14, 2017, due to breast cancer when she was only 40, saddened the entire mathematics community.

Maryam’s work straddled several branches of mathematics. She was intuitive and persistent. She would often take large sheets of paper and draw geometric patterns on them as she thought of the problem, prompting her daughter to think she was “painting again.” Manjul Bhargava of Princeton University remembers that Maryam was a “master of curved spaces.” As he explained in an email, “Everyone knows that the shortest distance between two points on a flat surface is a straight line. But if the surface is curved — for example, the surface of a ball or a doughnut — then the shortest distance [along the surface] between two points will also be along a curved path, and can thus be more complicated. Maryam proved many amazing theorems about such shortest paths — called geodesics — on curved surfaces, among many other remarkable results in geometry and beyond. Her work, and the research programmes she started, will have an impact on mathematics and physics for years to come.”

She had an uncanny intuition for geometric problems, Professor Bhargava said, which she would solve through drawings that looked like beautiful doodles “but were in fact profound geometric insights that she would then make rigorous later on.” Maryam was interested in complicated curved surfaces or hyperbolic geometry: for example, studying loops that don’t intersect; probing deeper to answer how many loops, which don’t intersect, are there of less than a given length on a curved surface. She worked with Alex Eskin to find a solution to the problem of understanding the trajectory of a billiard ball as it bounces around a table. In this, she generalised a work done by her doctoral adviser Curtis McMullen of Harvard University, also a Fields medallist.

A consequence of her work was to give an entirely new proof of a conjecture made by leading string theorist Edward Witten (a 1990 Fields medallist). The first proof of this conjecture was given by Maxim Kontsevich in 1992; it was such a difficult thing to prove that this work itself, in part, won him the Fields Medal in 1998. Maryam Mirzakhani’s proof of Witten’s conjecture was by relating it to an “elementary problem of counting the number of geodesics on individual surfaces.” She worked aggressively and went for deep and fundamental problems, never reaching for the “low-hanging fruit.” It was her strong geometric intuition and her fluency in a range of diverse techniques that made it possible for her to tackle these problems. In the words of Professor McMullen, “Maryam was a brilliant mathematician who has left us far too soon, and who will continue to inspire others to follow in her path.”

A tribute on the Stanford University website says she specialised in an area of mathematics that “read like a foreign language to those outside mathematics — moduli spaces, Teichmüller theory, hyperbolic geometry, Ergodic theory and symplectic geometry.” Each of these terms comes with a well-developed theory backing it and Maryam’s work was both breaking new ground and building a bridge across these areas. In an interview to Quanta magazine, her collaborator Professor Eskin said her doctoral thesis was such that you could immediately recognise that it belonged in a textbook.

An Iranian citizen, Maryam Mirzakhani was born on on May 3, 1977 in Tehran where she grew up in the post Iran-Iraq war period, “the lucky generation,” she said in a rare interview she gave to Quanta magazine. Her father Ahmad is an electrical engineer. She attended Farzanegan School there, part of the National Organization for Development of Exceptional Talents. In 1994, Maryam achieved the gold medal level in the International Mathematical Olympiad, the first female Iranian student to do so. In the 1995 International Mathematical Olympiad, she became the first Iranian student to achieve a perfect score and to win two gold medals. She obtained her B.Sc. in mathematics in 1999 from the Sharif University of Technology. She then went to the United States for graduate work, earning her Ph.D. in 2004 from Harvard University, where she worked under the supervision of the Fields Medalist Curtis T. McMullen. Maryam was a 2004 research fellow of the Clay Mathematics Institute and a professor at Princeton University. In 2008, she became a professor at Stanford University.

In 2005, Maryam married Jan Vondrák, a Czech theoretical computer scientist and applied mathematician who currently is an associate professor at Stanford University. They have a daughter named Anahita. Maryam was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2013. In 2016 the cancer spread to her bone and liver, and she died on July 14, 2017 at the age of 40 at Stanford hospital in Palo Alto, California where she lived with her family. During her lifetime, she had been celebrated with many awards and honours, like, AMS Blumenthal Award 2009; the 2013 AMS Ruth Lyttle Satter Prize in Mathematics (which is presented every two years by the American Mathematical Society and recognizes an outstanding contribution to mathematics research by a woman in the preceding six years); the Clay Research Award 2014; and of course the Fields Medal 2014. She was named one of Nature magazine's ten "people who mattered" of 2014. She was invited to be the plenary speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 2014 and was elected as the foreign associate to the French Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society in 2015; to the National Academy of Sciences in 2016; and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017.

A private person, she was known to be humble and creative. Maryam originally dreamed of becoming a writer but then shifted to mathematics. When she was working, she would doodle on sheets of paper and scribble formulas on the edges of her drawings, leading her daughter to describe the work as painting. “We overlapped at Harvard University early in our careers, and became instant friends then… Her work has just been so remarkable then and ever since; it was indeed a great honour for me to receive [the Fields Medal] together with her,” said Professor Bhargava. 

Source: Google search and Wikipedia.

Rupan Deol Bajaj

#55/100 in #100extraordinarypeople

KPS Gill, often described as the “Supercop”, passed away recently and all newspapers ran pages and pages of accolades for Mr. Gill, very conveniently ignoring his conviction for sexual harassment in 2005. Rupan Deol Bajaj, a senior IAS officer and his victim, who was the first woman to take a case of sexual harassment to the court in India, was very conveniently forgotten.

While it might be one perspective that women at the highest positions of the bureaucracy are immune from the general drudgery of the Indian legal system, retired senior IAS officer Rupan Deol Bajaj argues that the institutional exploitation is as casual even for women who comprise the topmost gentry. She emphasizes that a woman could be at any position but she still remains a woman. Her story is both of courage and despair. However the bottomline remains that she refused to give up and fought for her dignity till she regained it. On one hand it was a restoration of dignity and justice for Bajaj, on the other hand it was also pivotal in framing of jurisprudence on outraging the modesty of women under the Indian Penal Code, 1860.

Something rather unusual happened in the July of 1988. A high profile case was lodged with the police under the dormant sections 354 (assault or criminal force to a woman with intent to outrage her modesty) and 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman) of the Indian Penal Code, 1860. It was a unique case with no precedent.

As the story goes – Ms. Bajaj and her husband, both senior IAS officers, went to a dinner party at one of their colleagues’ place where the hero cop of Punjab insurgency, the Director General of Police, KPS Gill was also present. Now, as was the norm back in the eighties, men and women sat separately in respective semi-circles facing each other.

All of a sudden KPS Gill, unacquainted with the concepts of decency and consent, came to Ms. Bajaj’s seat and put up a finger on her face ordering her to come along. She told him that he was misbehaving but only if he could hear the warning. She stood up to leave and then he slapped on her posterior. All the guests were shocked but Ms. Bajaj was traumatised. And then she realized that the only way of leading a respectable life was to fight against the society where violation of dignity of women was casual.

Thus she filed an FIR with the police. Of course no investigation took place. She then approached the Judicial Magistrate along with her husband Mr.. B.R. Bajaj, a senior I.A.S. officer of the Punjab Cadre, who had filed a complaint in the Court of the Chief Judicial Magistrate for the same offenses, described above against KPS Gill and was a party to the case. The magistrate ordered the investigation against these complaints and Mr. Gill approached the High Court. The High Court quashed the complaints because the Honourable Court thought that it was a trivial offence under Section 95 of the Indian Penal Code not worthy of any prosecution. Woman’s dignity, always trivial! The court also said the offence was unnatural and improbable. What?! Anyway, despite these very interesting observations by the High Court, Ms. Bajaj decided to take the matter to Supreme Court. But she had already lost hope now. Then something extraordinary happened.

The Supreme Court overturned the decision of the lower Court and ruled that the offence of outraging the modesty of women was committed under Sections 354 and 509 of the Indian Penal Code. The problem that occurred was regarding the definition of modesty. The Apex Court referred to various dictionaries where modesty was defined as ‘womanly propriety of behaviour; scrupulous chastity of thought, speech and conduct’ and ‘decorous in manner and conduct; not forward or lewd; shamefast’. Another important case that was referred was State of Punjab v. Major Singh where the accused had fingered a seven and a half month old child and the question was whether she possessed modesty. Here the court held that any act done committed on women which is suggestive of sex would fall under the definition of modesty. Thus the ultimate test for ascertaining whether modesty has been outraged is, is the action of the offender such as could be perceived as one which is capable of shocking the sense of decency of a woman. Thus, in the instant case, because slapping on the posterior has sexual overtones, it clearly falls under the mischief of section 354 of the Indian Penal Code.

The Supreme Court thus ordered the lower court to dispose of the case as per the procedure prescribed by law. And thus started one of the most publicized, high-profile legal cases in India that remained in the media limelight for many years. The case, Rupan Deol Bajaj case or Rupan Deol Bajaj vs KPS Gill case, controvertially came to be known as “The Butt-Slapping Case”. Mr. Gill was convicted in 2005 after seventeen years of the commission of the offence. He was awarded the imprisonment of three months and a fine of Rs. 2,00,000. Ms. Bajaj refused to take the compensation as it cannot recompense her for the ignominy and the trauma she underwent for so much for her life. The imprisonment was subsequently converted into probation. Rupen Deol Bajaj was highly praised in the media for both filing a case against such a powerful officer of police and for refusing to be intimidated. 

Mr. Gill had been awarded Padma Shri in 1989. He was given the award even when he had been booked for trying to outrage her modesty. This was done despite more than 90 IAS officers petitioning the government not to honour a person involved in a molestation case. But then our society has certain criteria for greatness and being a respecter of the rights of their fellow beings is definitely not one of them. In 2010, after the Government's decision to strip police officers convicted of 'moral turpitude' of medals and awards, she demanded that the Government take back the Padma Shri award given to KPS Gill. She wanted the Government to move against Gill in the same manner as it was proceeding against ex-Haryana top cop SPS Rathore, to strip him of his police medal in the aftermath of the Ruchika Girhotra molestation case. Of course, that never happened in the case of the celebrated “Supercop”.

Ms. Bajaj, now retired, recalls her struggle as to how the drawing room discussions were around why a woman would trouble a man for this stature for such a trivial thing. Outraging the modesty of women is one of the most forgivable and forgettable offences in India. Women, be afraid for your modesty, not everyone can keep the courage living for seventeen years. Also rest in peace, Mr. KPS Gill! 

Source: Google search and Wikipedia.

Chhavi Rajawat

#54/100 in #100extraordinarywomen

While most of us lament about the corrupt system and its loopholes impeding our country’s growth, how many of us actually think about taking a lead and dare to give it all up to work at the grass-root level?

Among those few faces who lead our society by example, Chhavi Rajawat, the Sarpanch of Soda village in Rajasthan is a woman who has indeed made a difference. With an excellent academic background including a management degree, Chhavi worked for leading companies but left it all to serve her village. Giving up a promising corporate career, she chose to go back to her ancestral village and run for the election of village Sarpanch.

Chhavi was born in 1977 in Jaipur, Rajasthan. She hails from a small village called Soda in Malpura tehsil, Tonk district. She is an alumnus of Rishi Valley School (Andhra Pradesh), Mayo College Girls School (Ajmer), Lady Shri Ram College (University of Delhi) and has completed her MBA from Balaji Institute Of Modern Management, Pune. After doing her MBA, Chhavi worked for companies such as Times of India, Carlson Group of Hotels, and Airtel, before she realised the need to bring about a change in the grass-root level, if she wants to bring about a real difference. Her decision to contest elections was made after a group of people from her village approached and requested her. Quite naturally, the education and exposure that Chhavi brought along, caught the attention of village residents who voted in her favour. In 2011, all in her early 30s, she went back to her village, Soda, in Rajashthan’s Tonk district to become India’s youngest Sarpanch, the first woman Sarpanch and the only Sarpanch to hold an MBA degree. “As the post of Sarpanch at Soda was reserved for women in 2010, villagers wanted me to contest elections. Since I was regularly visiting Soda, I developed a special affection for them. Owing to my upbringing, I always wanted to payback something to the society. As I decided to leave my corporate career, my parents backed my decision to pursue social work,” she said. She now divides her time between her village, Soda, and Jaipur where she lives with her parents. Since her election as Sarpanch, she has been working to bring better water, solar power, paved roads, toilets and a bank to her village. She rues that the modern-day education system is pushing youngsters towards a rat race, leaving them hardly concerned about the society.

Soda is in a remote corner of Rajasthan where the houses are made of mud, electricity supplies are erratic, literacy levels are below 50 per cent and the fear of drought is never far away. The villagers said there had been no progress since Chhavi's brigadier grandfather, now in his 90s, had served as Sarpanch two decades ago and they wanted someone else in the family to take on the role.

In a span of 4 years since she got elected, Chhavi has worked to ensure regular supply of drinking water in the village households and construction of more than 40 roads. In the small village of the desert state, toilets have been constructed in 800 houses out of the total 900 that exist. She claims to have worked for enhancing electricity supply from four hours in a day in 2010 to 22 hours now. She also got a soft drink company to invest into cleaning a pond, the only source of drinking water in the village. The village of Soda has undergone a radical transformation under her leadership and is popular as one of the finest villages in India. But change did not come easily and she faced many challenges, including no support from the government at times. Despite being an elected representative, Chhavi is not affiliated to any political party. “If India continues to make progress at the same pace as it has for the past 65 years since independence, it just won’t be good enough. We’ll be failing people who dream about having water, electricity, toilets, schools and jobs. I am convinced we can do it differently and do it faster,” Chhavi said in an interview with NDTV.

She is swarmed by villagers as she walks down the road and she greets them by name as they share family news and pepper her with questions about progress on various projects. “Nobody has been able to do what she has done - no other Sarpanch has done as much,” said 30-year-old farmer Jai Singh. “I didn't have a choice,” said a smiling Chhavi, who represented India at a recent UN poverty summit. “The villagers broke all caste, gender and religious barriers to elect me,” she adds, a glamorous 33-year-old whose 10,000 constituents are mostly farmers and labourers largely untouched by the country’s economic boom. Her story reveals the potential of good grassroots leadership in making a difference in a country plagued by corruption and inefficiency.

As she planned an IT centre on the common land of Soda by utilising the central funds, few land grabbers who were eyeing the land, allegedly attacked Chhavi, her father and few others with sticks, iron rods and stones, after which she suffered a fracture and other injuries. However, the entire official machinery did not come to her support here as she was not affiliated to any political party, she says. “Even as I was an elected representative, the previous (Congress) regime did not support my ideas of social welfare and empowering ruralites. Development plans were stalled and the then establishment turned a blind eye on our woes. When I was attacked twice by the unsocial elements who were unhappy by my kind of transparent governance, the police officials did not act on my complaints. As I suffered a fracture, doctors at the local government hospitals refused to issue a medico-legal report (MLR),” she said while alleging that people at various levels connived with those who wanted to encroach land. Chhavi said that she faced the hardships with the active support of her parents and the villagers. However, she said that the support of her village made the government authorities realise the activities of the erring officials and support of the authorities. “It’s a huge opportunity for them to get some skills - there was nothing before,” said teacher Mohammed Sadeek, 25, about the youngsters who are all out in support of the IT centre.

When she constructed a drinking water reservoir that has created a shimmering blue lake in the middle of the village, she got her first taste of the bureaucratic hurdles that have repeatedly thwarted her. “I was told we could not use government machinery to clean up reservoirs. Finally, they (the government) told me to do it on my own,” she said. And that’s what she did - raising money from friends, family and companies to fund many of her projects. A soft drinks company invested Rs. 20 Lakhs in the project.

The Times of India, a leading English newspaper in India, credits her as the changing face of rural Rajasthan. On 25 March 2011, Chhavi Rajawat made a well-received address to delegates at the 11th Infopoverty World Conference held at the United Nations. Chhavi was also honoured by the late President of India APJ Abdul Kalam at the Technology Day function at New Delhi. She was also honoured “Young Indian Leader” by IBNLive.

Determined to bring about a faster and sustainable growth in the society, the young Sarpanch believes that a technology-driven system can be used to the advantage of common people in curbing corruption and maintaining transparency. She has not decided whether she will continue in development work once her five-year terms ends, but she is hoping her example will inspire other educated young people to take time out to serve their communities. “Your roots are your foundation. You have to start at the bottom to make a difference -- and there is so much left to do.”

Chhavi Rajawat is a one-woman whirlwind as she seeks to drag her impoverished ancestral village in the desert state of Rajasthan into the 21st Century. The fact that the denim-clad lady of urban India has heartily been welcomed and accepted at a village where women still veiled their faces in ghoonghat says a lot about our country’s people’s will to walk the path of development. 

Source: Google search and Wikipedia.

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Dr. Tahani Amer

#53/100 in #100extraordinarywomen

Tahani Amer discovered her natural passion and inclination for engineering while watching her father fixing his car’s engine as she sat inside her small Egyptian apartment. While her love of math created a clear path for a mechanical and aerospace engineering future, it was great teachers and her father that encouraged and guided Dr. Amer. In return, she spends a great deal of her time to inspire and challenge young women to reach their potential. Dr. Amer started working at NASA in the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Branch. By working in this branch, she gained valuable experience and fulfilled her dream to work with scientists and researchers in solving real-life problems. She recalls, “It was a real privilege to work with state-of-the-art technology and with researchers who love their work.” Then, she landed an opportunity in one of NASA’s wind tunnels to conduct pressure and thermal sensitive paint experiments in support of the NASA’s aeronautical research efforts. This proved to be a valuable experience from both a theoretical and practical point of view. She has experienced the excitement of working with large CFD computer codes and climbing up the ceiling of a wind tunnel to install a velocity probe. Dr. Amer has invented and patented a system to measure the thermal conductivity of a thin film. This measurement is used in the thermal modeling of several techniques for determining boundary layer transition location on models being tested in wind tunnels. Dr. Amer holds a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering, a master’s in aerospace engineering, and a doctoral of engineering from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.

Tahani Amer is an American Muslim NASA employee who grew up in a suburb of Cairo, Egypt. She had always strived to live by three simple principles: Please God and you will please all. Education is the key to opportunity. Serve others with compassion and kindness. She believd that if one thinks about these principles, it is very simple. You have general guidance about values and ethics from God and his books, self-determination by education, and a sense of social responsibility. She planned on going to medical school in Cairo, Egypt, but changed my major to engineering before starting college because of her life choices. She had gotten married at age 17 and moved to the United States.

Math was her favorite subject. She recognized early on that math provided an opportunity to find new methods for solving problems by using math models. When she came to the U.S. in 1983 and took her first calculus class, she could not speak a word in English, but she still achieved an A in the course. It was then that she knew an engineering career would be an awarding one. She obtained a two-year associate degree in science while taking care of two lovely children. Then, she went back to school to finish her bachelor’s in mechanical engineering and went on to earn her master’s in aerospace engineering. Recently, she earned her doctoral in engineering.

She believes that NASA is a soft ‘pillow’ that allows you to dream of the impossible and then work hard to make it a reality. In 1992, during her senior year of college, she started working at NASA on the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) project. By working on this project, she gained valuable experience and fulfilled her dream to work with scientists and researchers solving real-life problems! It was a privilege to work with state-of-the-art technology and with researchers who love their work. Then, she earned the opportunity to work in one of NASA’s wind tunnels to conduct pressure and thermal sensitive paint experiments for NASA’s Aeronautic Research efforts. This proved to be a valuable experience from both a theoretical and practical point of view. She experienced the excitement of working with large CFD computer codes and climbing up the ceiling of a wind tunnel to install a velocity probe. It was great; she felt like a little girl in the ‘candy store’ of NASA. Everything seemed possible. She believes that working at NASA is never boring. She invented and patented a system to measure the thermal conductivity of a thin film. This measurement is used in the thermal modeling of several techniques for determining boundary layer transition location on models being tested in wind tunnels. Currently, she contribute to NASA’s independent assessment process of the Agency’s Programs and Projects by working as a member of the Independent Program Assessment Office (IPAO), part of the Agency’s Office of Evaluation. She works very hard to skillfully execute my assignments and demonstrate managerial skills.

She strives to help and educate others by volunteering my time in community service through NASA programs, such as the “Day of Caring”, Engineering Week, the Speakers Bureau, Diversity Day, and after school science clubs. She spoke on the topic of Women in Islam during the Peace week at Old Dominion University in 2011, and was a guest speaker at the Annual Luncheon for the Virginia Space Grant Consortium (VSGC) to state representatives, university presidents, and new students. She also chaired the Applied Science Session for the VSGC and the IPAO NASA Program Management Challenge 2011. Her profile is included on one of the NASA Posters for outreach activity for Woman in Aerospace and in a college calculus book. She is also involved in mosque programs for teaching Islamic rules and Arabic to young children. After September 11, she contributed to her community in Hampton Roads, Va., by helping to educate and fill the gap that many Americans have in understanding the religion of Islam. She has given lectures in many churches, universities, and local school systems. She was even interviewed by the local newspaper on this topic. By living according to the aforementioned three principles, she tries to set a daily standard to challenge herself. In the same way, she challenges herself by her work with NASA, stretching her understanding and seeking to improve herself and others through helping NASA.

Source: https://women.nasa.gov/tahani-amer/

Deena Mehta

#52/100 in #100extraordinarywomen

Source: Google image search

Deena Mehta, India's first female stockbroker, was a lone woman in a male-dominated industry who stayed the course, battling sexism along the way, to became the Bombay Stock Exchange's first female president.

Born on February 18, 1961, Deena is an Indian businesswoman, broker, investor, financial adviser, chartered accountant, and social activist. Deena completed her schooling from Mary Immaculate Girls' High School in Mumbai. She is a commerce graduate and a chartered accountant. She has completed a Post Graduate degree in Management Studies (Finance) from the Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies and has also completed a Diploma in Stock Exchange studies from BSE Training Institute and a Post Graduate Diploma in Securities Law conducted by Government Law College, Mumbai.

Deena Mehta is married to Asit Mehta since 1984 and has two sons, Aditya and Aakash. Deena and Asit set up a Mumbai-based brokerage firm by the name of Nucleus Securities in 1986. This firm eventually became the Nucleus Group of Companies. Asit C. Mehta Investment Interrmediates Limited is a part of this Nucleus Group of Companies. "Our's is an arranged marriage, fixed by us. For, unlike the usual lovey-dovey couples, we did not go around. He has been my best teacher, philosopher and, guide. It was thanks to him that I became a broker in the first place,"she says, her voice getting a tad husky. Sixteen years ago, she created history once again, with her becoming the highest income-tax payee among Indian women. It seems, she knows as much finance as time-management, when she maintains that she always makes time for things she wants to do. She is a voracious reader of both fiction and non-fiction. Mills & Boons are her 'stress busters'. But unlike the characters in the mushy romantic novelettes, she has created history for herself on her own steam.

Deena Mehta was one of the first few woman members of Bombay Stock Exchange, Mumbai, was the first woman director on the board of the Bombay Stock Exchange, elected with the highest number of votes secured by any member in its history in 1997. She was Vice-President for two years and she eventually went on to be elected as the President of the Bombay Stock Exchange prior to corporatisation in 2001. That was a first in 125 years of the exchange's existence. Her tenure with the Bombay Stock Exchange lasted a total of 6 years from April 1996 to March 2002. She has rendered valuable services to the Exchange by serving as an active participant member on various committees. She is a member on various SEBI committees related to the Secondary Stock Market. In past, she has served as a Director on the Board of Central Depository Services (India) Limited, Cotton Association of India, National Payment Corporation of India and on the Board of BOI Shareholding Limited - a joint venture of BSE with Bank of India.

She is an Executive Member of South Asian Federation of Exchanges (SAFE), a Federation of Stock Exchanges in SAARC Region. She is also a visiting faculty on "stock markets" at leading Institutes like IIM (Ahmedabad). She has vast experience in specific functional areas of Banking, Finance and Capital Markets. She is a Managing Director of Asit C.Mehta Investment Interrmediates Limited (Trading Member of the Exchange) since January, 1998. She was appointed as a Director on the Board on 7th August, 2009. 

Deena Mehta was awarded for outstanding contribution in the field of Banking and Financial services by Ladies Wing, Indian Merchant Chamber and as outstanding Young Indian in Business Category by Indian Jaycees in 1998. She was also honored by Cosmos Bank for outstanding contribution in the field of Finance in December, 2005. She was conferred the Exceptional Women Achiever Awards by FICCI in 2014. She actively supports investor education and awareness initiatives. 

Does she enjoy power? "It is quite a feeling, though I have never used it for myself," she maintains. What about the heady feeling of bossing over so many powerful people? "It is, as you said, heady," she agrees.

Source: Wikipedia and Google search.