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Anna Mani, Indian weather scientist

A few years ago, independent journalist Nandita Jayaraj came across an anthology of essays on Indian women in science. Titled Lilavati’s Daughters, the collection featured stories of nearly 100 female scientists – from the Victorian era to contemporary times – but what caught Jayaraj’s attention...

Making ketchup glide, pesticides stick

Drops of water bead up or roll right off the leaves of the lotus, making for that metaphysical metaphor – live like a lotus in the water. But the leaves of plants such as wheat, onion and cabbage are also water-repelling, or hydrophobic, and this...

Dilip Kumar, Improbable Tamil Anthologist

Dilip Kumar, Booksellers and Exporters, was the name of the Tamil literary bookstore he ran in Mylapore, Chennai. For over a quarter century research scholars and avid readers dropped in here to discuss books with the genial owner. This was till 2016. He also shipped...

When Niels Bohr came to Mylapore

In the summer of 1958, Alladi Ramakrishnan returned to his elegant bungalow, Ekamra Nivas, in Madras after an unpaid sabbatical in the United States. The young Reader from the University of Madras had spent a year at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, at the...

The Ramachandran Plot

The double helix is, perhaps, one of the most iconic structures from the world of science. In Chennai, not far from the banks of river Adyar, there’s an auditorium in the heart of a national research centre that appears wholly unremarkable, but for its name:...