Anna Mani facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Anna Mani
അന്ന മാണി |
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Anna Mani
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| Born | 23 August 1918 Peermade, Kerala
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| Died | 16 August 2001 (aged 82) |
| Nationality | Indian |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Meteorology, Physics |
| Institutions | Indian Meteorological Department, Pune and Raman Research Institute, Bangalore |
Anna Mani (born August 23, 1918 – died August 16, 2001) was an amazing Indian scientist. She was a physicist and a meteorologist. This means she studied weather and how to measure it.
She became the Deputy Director General of the India Meteorological Department. She also worked as a visiting professor at the Raman Research Institute. Anna Mani helped a lot in making tools to measure weather. She also did research on sunlight, ozone, and wind energy.
Early Life and Dreams
Anna Modayil Mani was born in 1918 in Peermade, Kerala. She came from a traditional family. Her father was a civil engineer. Anna was the seventh of eight children.
When she was a child, Anna loved to read. She read many books. By age eight, she had read almost all the books in her local library. By age twelve, she had read all the English books too! For her eighth birthday, she chose a set of encyclopedias instead of diamond earrings. Reading helped her learn new ideas. It also made her care deeply about fairness and justice.
Her family expected the boys to have big careers. The girls were expected to get married. But Anna had other plans. She was inspired by Mahatma Gandhi and the freedom movement. She even started wearing only khadi clothes.
Education Journey
Anna first wanted to be a dancer. But she chose to study physics because she loved it. In 1939, she earned her B.Sc Honors degree. She studied physics and chemistry at Pachaiyappa's College in Chennai.
In 1940, she won a scholarship. This allowed her to do research at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. Later, in 1945, she went to Imperial College London. She planned to study physics further. But she ended up specializing in tools for measuring weather.
A Career in Weather Science
After college, Anna worked with Professor C. V. Raman. She studied how light behaves in ruby and diamond. She wrote five research papers. She even submitted her PhD paper. But she did not get a PhD degree. This was because she did not have a master's degree in physics.
In 1948, she came back to India. She joined the Meteorological Department in Pune. She wrote many papers about weather instruments. She was in charge of getting weather tools from Britain. By 1953, she was the head of her division. She had 121 men working for her!
Anna Mani wanted India to make its own weather instruments. She helped standardize the designs for about 100 different tools. From 1957 to 1958, she set up many stations. These stations measured how much sunlight reached the Earth. In Bangalore, she started a small workshop. This workshop made tools to measure wind speed and solar energy. She also worked on a device to measure ozone. Ozone is a gas in the Earth's atmosphere.
She became a member of the International Ozone Association. She also set up a weather observatory. This was at the Thumba rocket launching facility.
Anna Mani was very dedicated to her work. She never married. She was part of many science groups. These included the Indian National Science Academy and the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO). In 1987, she received the INSA K. R. Ramanathan Medal.
In 1969, she moved to Delhi. She became the Deputy Director General there. In 1975, she worked as a WMO consultant in Egypt. She retired from the Indian Meteorological Department in 1976.
Anna Mani had a stroke in 1994. She passed away on August 16, 2001, in Thiruvananthapuram. The World Meteorological Organization remembered her on her 100th birthday. They shared her life story and an interview with her.
See also
In Spanish: Anna Mani para niños
