Seen and unseen

In November last year, I attended the Royal Society’s ‘Women in Science: historical perspectives’ conference. Some subtle but revealing scientific connections emerged during the meeting, resonating closely with my research on the educational trajectories and scientific careers of South Asian women who trained at British universities in the post-war period.

Bringing together historians and scientists, the conference facilitated discussions on the numerous ways in which women have historically contributed to scientific knowledge production, innovation and discovery. It drew attention to the varied visibility of women in science, from well-known figures to those largely absent from the historical record. Through these discussions, the conference recovered institutional links and networks of connections that have shaped women’s scientific lives across time, disciplines and geographies.

I was particularly interested in a paper on the British botanist and geneticist Nora Barlow, which revealed a shared institutional affiliation at the John Innes Horticultural Institute with the Indian cytologist Janaki Ammal. Ammal’s scientific career framed the historical context for my own paper on Indian women in science. Although their scientific connections appear tenuous at first, as we look deeper they become more apparent. Ammal co-authored the Chromosome atlas of cultivated plants with the Institute’s director Cyril Darlington FRS, who served as the president of the Genetics Society from 1943 to 1946 – a society that Barlow had helped to establish in 1919. Both Barlow’s and Ammal’s works are included in the History of Genetics Book Collection Catalogue held at the John Innes Centre in Norwich, which provides an archival link to the interconnected scientific worlds of plant genetics research in the twentieth century.

E K Janaki Ammal, from The Modern Review, February 1938, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Another conference paper, on the horticulturist and patroness Ellen Ann Willmott at the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), revealed further institutional connections with Ammal, who became the RHS’s first female salaried employee in 1946. In the RHS’s recent celebration of women in horticulture, Ammal’s contributions were recognised alongside Willmott’s, highlighting women’s roles in horticulture as plant collectors, artists and scientists despite historical constraints. These intersections captured something essential about the histories of women in science and the scientific relationships that shaped them. Such connections illustrate women’s global struggles to participate in science over the centuries, and also highlight the diversity of their experiences, particularly as women scientists from the Global South remain significantly underrepresented in scientific and academic institutions.

Ammal’s unconventional scientific career is celebrated in institutional and biographical accounts, as she was one of the few women to break into scientific institutions in both Britain and India in the twentieth century. Women’s contributions to Indian science, as my doctoral research shows, have remained largely peripheral. Much of the existing historiography focuses on male scientists and technocrats who envisioned Indian national science as a symbol of political sovereignty. A recent collated effort in the form of biographical accounts of Indian women scientists by the Indian National Science Academy has begun to fill some of this missing history. However, short and curated accounts do not fully capture the complexities of women’s lived experiences. There is still remarkably little primary material on women in Indian science, and the institutional record often focuses on individual triumphs without examining the historical and political conditions under which scientific careers developed.

To address this gap, I conducted life history interviews with Indian women who studied mathematics and molecular biology at British universities between the 1960s and 1990s. Their stories provided a nuanced understanding of how postcolonial academic mobility unfolded in practice. The interviews demonstrated that decisions to study science in Britain were shaped as much by personal and academic aspirations as by new postcolonial educational opportunities, such as the introduction of Commonwealth Scholarships in 1959.

However, in the 1960s, women comprised only a small proportion of Indian PhD students in Britain. The few who did undertake scientific training in Britain found themselves navigating universities and laboratory spaces from which women had historically been marginalised. Their experiences were additionally shaped by the challenges of being an overseas student and a woman of colour in male-dominated scientific spaces. One interviewee described her experience of balancing motherhood with doctoral research. Another paper at the conference drew attention to similar experiences of managing motherhood alongside scientific careers. These discussions contribute to broader discourses on the ongoing negotiations between women’s scientific ambitions and normative gender roles within the family and institution.

Ajit Iqbal Singh PhD, Mathematics, Newham College, University of Cambridge (1966-1969). Photograph: Nilakshi Das.

Ajit Iqbal Singh (above) was one of four women I interviewed, all of whom returned to India after completing their doctoral degrees. Return was also motivated by a sense of moral responsibility to contribute to the development of national science in India. However, the promise of a successful scientific career proved challenging, as reintegration into Indian institutions and laboratories was not straightforward. Access to higher positions and resources was shaped not only by scientific merit but also by gendered institutional hierarchies. The myth of gender neutrality in institutions often concealed the subtle but persistent barriers that shaped women’s everyday experience of scientific work.

Returning male scientists, especially in the 1970s, with similar career trajectories, assumed roles in technopolitical projects central to post-colonial nation-building in India, such as defence and military research. Women scientists, by contrast, assumed teaching positions in universities and colleges, roles that conferred social respectability and were regarded as compatible with continuing familial responsibility.

Yet the women’s scientific careers and lives did not follow a singular personal or professional trajectory. The relevance of visibility and representation remains central for understanding women’s experiences in science. Despite structural challenges, they built scientific communities, contributed to research and asserted their right to scientific belonging in spaces resistant to their participation. These cases also demonstrate that women’s careers in science are shaped by a complex intersection of social, economic and institutional factors that vary greatly across time and place. Therefore, a collective reading of these stories reveals historical connections that are often unlikely and uneven, and offers new ways to rethink a more inclusive history of women’s involvement in scientific knowledge production around the world.