Anna Mani: The Pioneer Indian Meteorologist (E)
Anna Mani was an Indian physicist and meteorologist. She was the Deputy Director General of the Indian Meteorological Department. She made significant contributions in the field of meteorological instrumentation. She conducted research and published numerous papers on solar radiation, ozone and wind energy measurements. After graduating physics and chemistry, she worked under Prof. C V Raman, researching the optical properties of ruby and diamond. She authored five research papers, but she was not granted a PhD because she did not have a master's degree in physics. Then she moved to Britain to study pursue physics, but she ended up studying meteorological instruments at Imperial College London. After returning to India in 1948, she joined the Meteorological department in Pune. In 1960, Mani started her work on measuring atmospheric ozone, before the world even understood the ozone layer’s functions. She designed an instrument - ozonesonde - to measure atmospheric ozone. She also set up a meteorological observatory at the Thumba rocket launching facility.
