Category Archives: Ada Lovelace Day 2023

ALD23: Professor Asima Chatterjee, Chemist

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Professor Asima Chatterjee

Professor Asima Chatterjee was a pioneering organic chemist and India’s first female scientist to be awarded a doctor of science degree. Her work helped develop drugs that treat epilepsy and malaria, and deepened scientific understanding of how indigenous plants – particularly those from south Asia – can be used in modern medicine. Over the course of a long career, she made notable contributions in the fields of alkaloids, terpenoids, polyphenolics, and structural and mechanistic organic chemistry.

Chatterjee was born on 23 September 1917 in Kolkata, India. Her father was a chemist, academic and amateur botanist who supported her education and encouraged her interest in the medicinal properties of plants. After completing higher studies, Chaterjee pursued a masters in organic chemistry from the University of Calcutta, graduating in 1938.

She completed her doctorate in science at the University of Calcutta, working alongside academics including Sir Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray (sometimes referred to as “the father of Indian chemistry”). While pursuing her doctorate, Chatterjee joined the women-only Lady Brabourne College to establish and lead its chemistry department. She received her PhD in 1944, becoming the first woman to do so at an Indian university, and was appointed honorary lecturer in chemistry at Calcutta University.

In 1947, Chatterjee moved to the US to undertake post-doctoral research on naturally occurring glycosides and biologically active alkaloids (at the University of Wisconsin and Caltech respectively). The latter subject became one of her lifelong intellectual preoccupations. After a year studying alkaloids at the University of Zürich, she returned to India in 1950, continuing her research into biologically active compounds in medicinal plants.

Routinely struggling to secure funding for her work at the University of Calcutta, Chatterjee often poured her own money into her research. The investment paid off. She successfully developed drugs that were patented by the Indian government, notably the anti-epileptic drug Ayush-56 (which used chemicals from a species of aquatic fern) and the antimalarial medication Ayush-64, which was made from plants including the blackboard tree and swertia chirayita herb.

Chatterjee also studied cancer and anti-cancer growth drugs, investigating how alkaloids could be used in chemotherapy. One breakthrough came with her work on vinca alkaloids from the Madagascar periwinkle plant, which can help slow down some cancer cells by preventing them from duplicating.

Over the course of her career, Chatterjee published around 400 papers in national and international journals. She held the coveted post of Khaira Professor of Chemistry at the University of Calcutta from 1962 to 1982, and became the first female General President of the Indian Science Congress Association in 1975. In recognition of her outstanding contribution to science, President Neelam Sanjiva Reddy nominated her as a member of the Rajya Sabha – the upper house of the Indian parliament – in 1982.

By 2003, Chatterjee had achieved her longstanding dream of establishing an institute for the research and development of Ayurvedic medicines based on Indian plants (the Regional Research Institute in Kolkata, now the Central Ayurveda Research Institute). She died on 22 November 2006, aged 89.

Her many awards included the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in chemical science – of which she became the first female recipient in 1961 – and the Padma Bhushan, India’s third-highest civilian honour.

Further Reading

Written by Moya Crockett, with thanks to Stylist for their support.

ALD23: Professor Hao Yichun, Palaeontologist

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Professor Hao Yichun

Hao Yichun, 郝诒纯, was a Chinese geologist who played a central role in establishing palaeontology as a discipline in her home country. The co-author of China’s first palaeontology textbooks, she was recognised for pioneering the fields of stratigraphy, micropaleontology and paleoceanography. Her research helped illuminate China’s geological history, including the secrets of ancient marine organisms, and supported the exploration of energy resources.

Hao was born in 1920 in Hubei, central China. She studied geology at National Southwest Association University before completing a postgraduate degree in stratigraphic palaeontology (which combines the study of fossils with that of rock layers) at Tsinghua University, Beijing.

In 1946, Hao was hired by Peking University (now Beijing University) to lecture in geology, optical mineralogy and engineering geology. She transferred to the Beijing Institute of Geology in 1952, where she rose to the rank of associate professor and co-founded the major in stratigraphic palaeontology.

Hao was a prolific publisher of scientific research, and in 1956 co-authored Paleontology, China’s first ever academic textbook on the subject. Over her career, she embarked on numerous gruelling geological surveys in far-flung parts of China, mapping out ancient rock layers in the northeast and southwest of the country. Her stratigraphic research spanned the Mesozoic (including Jurassic-Cretaceous) and Cenozoic periods. She is especially recognised for furthering paleontological understandings of foraminifera, single-celled, shelled organisms mostly found in seawater.

Involved with the Chinese Communist Party since childhood, Hao was interested in how her research could enhance national energy infrastructure. She established courses on petroleum geology at the Institute of Geology and spearheaded the production of geological maps that supported the development of coal fields in China.

Her work also took her on research trips to countries that had friendly relationships with China, such as Cuba and the USSR. She was a visiting scholar at Moscow University from 1957 to 1959, a period during which she travelled to the Caucasus and Crimea to continue her studies of foraminifera, ostracods and their biostratigraphy.

Later in her career, Hao was made a professor at the China University of Geosciences, Beijing, and served as chairwoman of China’s Palaeontological and Micropalaeontological Societies. In 1980, she became an academician in the Academic Division of Earth Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Hao died on 13 June 2001, aged 80 or 81. The same year, a genus of pterodactyloid pterosaur discovered in Liaoning, China – the haopterus – was named in her honour. Another pterosaur found in Mongolia, Otogopterus haoae, has since been named in recognition of Hao’s “outstanding contributions on the Mesozoic palaeontology and stratigraphy in China”.

Further Reading

Written by Moya Crockett, with thanks to Stylist for their support.

ALD23 Books: Lab Hopping: Women Scientists in India, Aashima Dogra & Nandita Jayaraj

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Lab Hopping: Women Scientists in India, Aashima Dogra & Nandita Jayaraj

Embark on a one-of-a-kind journey through India’s science laboratories in pursuit of the true story behind the gender gap.

From Bhopal to Bhubaneswar, from Bangalore to Jammu, Aashima Dogra and Nandita Jayaraj engage in thought-provoking conversations with renowned scientists like Gagandeep Kang, Rohini Godbole, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw and Prajval Shastri, as well as researchers at earlier stages of their scientific careers. These dialogues about the triumphs and challenges faced by women offer fresh perspectives on the gender gap that continues to haunt Indian science today.

Our labs are brimming with inspiring stories of women scientists persisting in science despite facing apathy, stereotypes, and sexism to systemic and organizational challenges. Stories that reveal both a broken system and the attempts by extraordinary women working to fix it. By questioning whether India is doing enough to support its women in science and if western models of science and feminism can truly be applied in India, the authors not only offer a comprehensive examination of the state of women in science but also offer a roadmap for the way forward.

Order the book here.

About the Authors

Aashima Dogra is a science writer with several years of experience communicating science in popular media. She studied Scientific Research and Communication at the University of Warwick and then went on to become a science journalist with The Asian Age, Deccan Chronicle, and then a science editor at Brainwave Magazine. When she is not travelling to laboratories around the country trying to sniff out fantastic stories, you will find her at her desk, which overlooks the snowy mountains in Himachal Pradesh, India.

You can follow Aashima Dogra’s work here:

Twitter: @aashimafreidog
Website: thelifeofscience.com/ 

Nandita Jayaraj is a freelance science writer and storyteller who started her career at The Hindu, followed by a stint at Brainwave, a magazine where she met her science-soulmate Aashima. Since completing her master’s degree in bioinformatics and a diploma in journalism in 2012, Nandita has been writing, editing, and creating various kinds of science media. She is also an author of several children’s books such as Anna’s Extraordinary Adventures with Weather and 31 Fantastic Adventures in Science, which she co-authored with Aashima Dogra. Nandita spends most of her time plotting new projects whilst flitting between Kerala and Karnataka, where she is lucky enough to have places that feel like home.

You can follow Nandita Jayaraj’s work here:

Twitter: @nandita_j
Website: thelifeofscience.com/

With thanks to Synergy for their support.

ALD23: Professor Tsai-Fan Yu, Physician and Researcher

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Professor Tsai-Fan Yu

Professor Tsai-Fan Yu, 郁采蘩, was a renowned Chinese-American medical doctor whose pioneering research helped make gout a curable disease. The first woman to be appointed full professor at the prestigious Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, she discovered medicines that are still used today to treat and prevent gout and kidney stones.

Yu was born in Shanghai in 1911 and attended Peking Union Medical College on a full scholarship, graduating with the highest honours on her medical degree in 1939. That year, she became the school’s chief resident in internal medicine, an unprecedented position for a woman at the time. She emigrated to New York in 1947, becoming a US citizen three years later.

Upon arriving in New York, Yu initially taught at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. In 1957, she joined the staff faculty at Mount Sinai Hospital, where she would remain for the rest of her career.

It was at Mount Sinai that Yu began to focus her research on gout, a disease that causes sudden swelling and severe pain in the joints. Alongside her colleague Dr Alexander Gutman, she discovered that the pain experienced by gout patients is due to elevated levels of uric acid in the body. This in turn can solidify into sharp crystals around joints, causing arthritis. Yu also identified links between gout and other medical conditions such as hypertension and diabetes, and helped establish one of the first systematised lab tests for diagnosing rheumatoid arthritis.

Before Yu, gout had been considered a progressive, deforming disease that could only be managed with extreme dietary restrictions, surgery and even amputation. But from the gout clinic she co-founded at Mount Sinai, she built up a reputation for translating lab findings into real-world solutions. Her clinical studies in the 1950s and 1960s led to the development of many new gout medications including allopurinol, colchicine and probenecid, all of which are still used to treat and prevent the disease today.

In 1973, Yu became the first woman to be appointed as a full professor at Mount Sinai Hospital. She published more than 220 scientific journal articles before retiring in 1992, research that was continuously funded by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) for 26 years. Overall, she is estimated to have worked with more than 4,000 patients suffering from gout.

However, Yu’s impact was not purely scientific. So beloved was she by her patients, they held annual “Gout Club” meetings in her honour. She lived until the age of 95, dying on 2 March 2007.

Yu’s awards included the Distinguished Career Achievement Award from the Mount Sinai Medical Center and the Master Award from the American Association of Rheumatology.

Further Reading

Written by Moya Crockett, with thanks to Stylist for their support.

ALD23: Professor Lina Stern, Neurophysiologist and Biochemist

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Professor Lina Stern

Professor Lina Solomonovna Stern, Лина Соломоновна Штерн, was a Russian biochemist and neurophysiologist. A world-renowned scientist during her lifetime, she was one of the first researchers to identify what is now known as the blood-brain barrier, and conducted pioneering research on the central nervous system.

Stern was born on 26 August 1878 in Libau in the Russian Empire (today part of Latvia). She dreamed of becoming a doctor, but was denied entry to Russian universities due to her Jewish heritage. Aged 20, she moved to Switzerland and embarked on a medical degree at the University of Geneva, graduating in 1903.

Not long after completing her medical training, Stern took an assistant job in the university’s physiology department, where she pursued original research in biochemistry and neuroscience. With physiologist Frédéric Battelli, she published more than 50 papers on subjects including the effects of electrical discharge on the heart and the physiology of blood.

Particularly notable was Stern and Batelli’s work on respiratory enzymes, which has been recognised as groundbreaking by generations of scientists. Decades before the British biochemist Hans Krebs identified the citric acid cycle (a series of chemical reactions that release stored energy through the oxidation of a particular molecule), Battelli and Stern’s experiments had revealed many key steps in the process. When Krebs received a Nobel Prize for his work in 1953, he paid tribute to Stern and Batelli.

In 1918, Stern became a physiological chemistry professor at the University of Geneva – the first woman to hold such a post in any department at the institution. She was increasingly interested in the physiology of the central nervous system, particularly what is now known as the blood-brain barrier (BBB). Between 1918 and 1925, Stern co-authored several studies that demonstrated the existence of what she called the “hematoencephalic barrier”. While previous scientists had proposed the concept of the BBB, Stern’s experiments played a vital role in confirming its existence.

Stern returned to the USSR in 1925, having been invited to lead the physiology department at the Second Moscow State University. There, she organised scientific laboratories and continued her research, publishing 49 journal articles in three years. In 1929, she founded the Russian Institute of Physiology, where groups of scientists continued to investigate the BBB, among other subjects. A landmark paper by Stern in 1934 showed that the BBB selectively allows certain substances to enter while protecting the inside of the brain, today recognised as two of the barrier’s main functions.

Stern’s research was not limited to the BBB. In 1939, she proposed injecting potassium phosphate into the scalp (known as suboccipital injection) to address traumatic shock, a controversial treatment used during World War II to help wounded soldiers. She later used suboccipital injection to provide patients with a new medication for tuberculosis meningitis (TBM). This approach proved relatively successful in aiding recovery from what had previously been considered an incurable disease, and Stern and colleagues received a patent for TBM treatment.

Several years in Stern’s later life were hard. Increasing hostility to Jewish people in the USSR following World War II saw her expelled from all her scientific posts. In 1949, she was exiled to Kazakhstan for five years – a result of her involvement with anti-fascist committees associated with scientists and women.

However, after the death of Joseph Stalin, Stern returned to Moscow and led the physiology department at the Institute of Biophysics for 15 years. In a 1958 review of BBB studies, she left a dry acknowledgment of her time in exile: “Our scientific research was interrupted in 1948.” She worked in science until her death on 7 March 1968, aged 89.

Further Reading

Written by Moya Crockett, with thanks to Stylist for their support.