Today, even Google Doodles celebrates the 100th birthday of Asima Chatterjee, an Indian organic chemist best known for her works on anti-malarial drugs.
If you lived during the 1900’s-1950’s in India, you would know that not many girls even dreamed of pursuing careers in science, even girls today in India are forced by family members to just clean and get married, and studies were not important. However, Chatterjee has become a role model for many girls (and women) who want much, much more than what society tells them they’re supposed to do.
Asima Chatterjee (née Mookerjee) was born on September 23, 1917, in Bengal, but grew up in Kolkata She had received honors from the Scottish Church College and University of Calcutta.
Chatterjee had done much research but was primarily focused on natural products chemistry, and created alkaloids for chemotherapy, anti-malarial, and anti-convulsants drugs.
Later in life, she became the second woman (the first being Janaki Ammal) to be given a Doctorate of Science, by an Indian University and was in the Lady Brabourne College in the University of Calcutta.
Organic sciences back in the 1900’s were not easy, it involved getting your hands dirty, and countless amounts of fails, and added the number of people telling her that she could never, it must have been an impossible task to conduct her experiments, but the doctor kept her head up, rightfully earning many achievements and forever changing the way world saw science.
Asima was also well-known for her forty year long research on a naturally occurring compound called alkaloids, that are made of basic nitrogen atoms. Alkaloids are now often used for chemotherapy and to divide the cells in cancer patients.
Other provisions to science by Chatterjee consist of the structure of ajmalicine and sarpagine, was the first person who considered stereo-configuration of sargpagine, calculated the actions of Lewis acids on coumarins, and so much more.
She had also received many awards, being the first female to be awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, became the first female scientist to be the General President of the Indian Science Congress Association, and was nominated by Zail Singh, the former President of India, to join the Rajya Sabha.
Asima Chatterjee broke many barriers and expectations for girls in India, who had already been discouraged and led away from science, and we could never thank her enough for all her contributions — not only for science, but for people.
