Bibha Chowdhuri

Why read about her? Today, the women behind ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission and Chandrayaan-3 are celebrated. But others went first: trailblazers, people who are the first to do something that others do later.

The first was Bibha Chowdhuri, India's first woman physicist (a scientist who studies matter and energy). She made her way in a field where almost everyone was a man.

She was born in 1913 in Kolkata, 'in an India that still followed the traditional path'. Then, women struggled even to get knowledge and equitable (fair, equal) access to education.

So the text calls her 'a rare beam of light — a woman who defied the odds and lit a path for others to follow.' Remember that image: the story comes back to it at the end.

Two obstacles. She rose 'not only against the societal expectations of women but also amidst the towering giants of science'.

Those were 'men whose names the world would come to celebrate, while hers was whispered only in the halls of those who recognised her brilliance.' The whole chapter answers this sentence.

Her persistence (keeping on, even when it is hard) earned her a place at the Bose Institute in Kolkata.

There she began to 'chip away at the walls of exclusion', and became the first Indian woman to excel in high-energy particle physics. Notice the picture: she did not knock the wall down in one blow; she chipped at it, bit by bit.