Snippets of Information
Personalities - Science
* 27 Dec 2025
Image source: indiatoday.in
Janaki Ammal was born on November 4, 1897, to EK Krishnan, a sub-judge
with an unending appetite for learning, and Deviammal. Janaki, the tenth
child from the second marriage, listened closely to her father’s
evening conversations about botany, poetry, and the natural world.
She studied in Tellicherry and then Madras, where Queen Mary’s College
opened her world wider. Presidency College sharpened it further. By the
early 1920s, she had a Botany degree, a strong mind, a sharper will, and
a Barbour Scholarship waiting for her across the ocean. She earned her
Master’s degree in 1925, returned to India to teach for a few years, and
then travelled back to complete her doctorate in 1931. The University
of Michigan later honoured her work with an honorary doctorate in 1956,
writing: "She and her patient endeavours stand as a model for serious
and dedicated scientific workers."
In the early 1930s, India had a problem: its native sugarcane varieties
were hardy but not very sweet. Farmers grew them, but the country still
depended on sweeter strains from abroad. The Sugarcane Breeding Station
in Coimbatore was trying to change that. Janaki joined the project as a
cytogeneticist - a specialist studying chromosomes and inheritance. She
returned to London and worked at the John Innes Horticultural Institute.
Her work at the Royal Horticultural Society soon made her a respected
name. There, among the magnolias of Wisley, she found another quiet joy.
One of the shrubs she studied - a small, elegant bloom - was later
named after her: Magnolia Kobus Janaki Ammal.
By the end of her life, she had transformed sugarcane genetics, mapped
thousands of flowering plants, guarded forests like a sentinel, and left
behind a scientific legacy so deep that a magnolia is named after her.
On her last day on earth, she was still in her lab at eighty-seven, still refusing to slow down.
Source: Janaki Ammal, India's first woman PhD, and the reason
sugarcanes are sweet today by Roshni Chakrabarty, New Delhi,
indiatoday.in, Dec 27, 2025
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