"The Anna Mani lecture series is part of the ongoing effort by the Working Group for Gender Equity of the Astronomical Society of India for increasing gender sensitisation in the astronomy community in India. Anna Mani, after whom this lecture series is based, was a pioneering Indian physicist and a meterologist who carried out path-breaking research in 1950s India, against all odds. After completing her undergraduate degree in physics from Presidency College, Madras, she undertook research at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. She worked with C V Raman on the spectroscopy of diamonds and rubies. However, she was not granted a PhD degree by Madras University, on the pretext that she did not have a masters degree, ignoring the fact that she had obtained a scholarship for graduate studies on the basis of her undergraduate degree. She then took up an internship to study physics at Imperial College, London but ended up in specializing on meterological instrumentation. She returned to India in 1948 and joined the Indian Meterological Department at Pune. In 1976, she retired as the deputy director general of IMD, and subsequently returned to the Raman Research Institute as a visiting professor for several years. During her career as a meterologist, Anna Mani helped in setting up instruments for studying the ozone layer and wind energy, as well as a millimeter-wave telescope at Nandi Hills to study solar radiation. She wrote two books on Solar radiation." An article on Anna Mani was published on BBC news on 8th Dec 2023, please find more information from the link.
