Biography Of Rajeshwari Chatterjee | Free PDF Download

EARLY LIFE

• Chatterjee was born in 1922 in Karnataka. She had her primary education in a “special English school” founded by her grandmother. After finishing her schooling she got admitted into Central College of Bangalore where she earned B.Sc (Hons) and M.Sc degrees in Mathematics.
• In both these exams she ranked first in the Mysore University. She received Mummadi Krishnaraja Wodeyar Award and M.T. Narayana Iyengar Prize and the Walters Memorial Prize respectively for her performances in the B.Sc and M.Sc examinations.

GENIUS

• In 1943, after her M.Sc, she joined the Indian Institute of Science(IISc), Bangalore as a Research Student in the then Electrical Technology Department in the area of Communication.
• In the 1950s it was very difficult for Indian women to go abroad to pursue higher education. But Chatterjee was determined to do so.
• In the US, she was admitted to the University of Michigan and obtained her master’s degree from the Department of Electrical Engineering.In early 1953 she obtained her Ph.D degree under the guidance of Professor William Gould Dow.

 IISC

• In 1953, after obtaining her PhD degree, she returned to India .During the same period, she went on to become a professor at IISc, and eventually became the Chairman in the Department of Electrical Communication Engineering.
• Her areas of teaching expertise included electromagnetic theory, electron tube circuits and microwave technology.
• She married Sisir Kumar Chatterjee, who was a faculty member of the same college. After their marriage, she and her husband built a microwave research laboratory and began research in the field of Microwave Engineering, the first such research in India

MENTOR

• Over her lifetime, she mentored 20 PhD students, wrote over 100 research papers, and authored seven books.
• Following her retirement from the IISc in 1982, she worked on social programs, including the Indian Association for Women’s Studies.
• The only woman faculty in the institute at the time, Rajeshwari is widely considered as the first woman engineer to hail from Karnataka.

 IISC

• Rajeshwari Chattopadhyay, also a student of SK Chatterjee, who herself became a successful researcher, remembers how there were always more female students in the microwave research lab, perhaps because the Chatterjees’ felt that female students were more sincere and worked harder.
• According to her, a great source of support through Chatterjee’s life was her husband. Sonde recalls the Chatterjees were “both wedded to work”, and led simple lives until the end. SK Chatterjee died in 1994.
• But Rajeshwari continued to lead an active life. Chattopadhyay remembers how, even in her 80s.

LAST DAYS

• In 2010, days after her last solo trip to visit her daughter, she collapsed in her house in Malleswaram, and breathed her last on being taken to the hospital.
• Acknowledging her groundbreaking contribution to the field of microwave and antennae engineering in the country, the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development named her as one of the ‘first women achievers of India

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