Lopamudra is celebrated in the Rigveda as a rishika (woman seer) and the wife of the sage Agastya. She is credited with composing hymns. She is the author of a well-known dialogue in which she argues for balancing spiritual discipline with the legitimate duties and desires of married life. Counted among the brahmavadinis she was recognised as a composer and thinker. Her hymn is admired for its craftsmanship and rhetorical skill. Lopamudra represents the often-overlooked truth that women were active authors of India's foundational texts.

History does not celebrate vaidyas or doctors. Rusa is a rare name. Her work on Ayurveda was translated into Arabic on the order of Abassid caliph Harun al Rashid in the eighth century. As medical education began after the age of maturity, women students could not pursue them since they were married by this age.

Gargi Vachaknavi was a Vedic-era philosopher and Brahmavadini (a woman devoted to sacred knowledge) who features in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. At a grand philosophical assembly convened by King Janaka, she publicly cross-examined the sage Yajnavalkya about the fundamental fabric of reality. She asked what the universe is "woven upon." Her questions probed so deep into first principles that Yajnavalkya cut off the interrogation with a famous warning. She is also credited with hymns in the Rigveda.
Maitreyi questioned her husband Yajnavalkya who wished to divide the wealth between his two wives and take Sanyasa. She asked him of what use is the wealth (even the wealth of the whole world) if it cannot give her immortality.

Kamala Sohonie made history as the first Indian woman to earn a PhD in a scientific discipline (biochemistry) from Cambridge Her breakthrough came only after a disappointment. Nobel laureate C.V. Raman initially refused to admit her to the Indian Institute of Science. Sohonie stood her ground — remembered as a Satyagraha-style protest — until Raman relented and led to her excellent work. Her research included the nutritional properties of legume proteins and a palm extract. She later led scientific institutions and championed nutrition science.

Anandibai (Anandi Gopal) Joshi became one of the first Indian women to earn a degree in Western medicine. She graduated from the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1886. She was married very young but was encouraged by her husband to study. She defied ferocious social opposition to travel alone across the world and study. She was driven by the ambition to treat Indian women who would not see male physicians.
Her graduation was a landmark for Indian women in science and medicine, and it electrified a generation. Tragically, she contracted tuberculosis and died at just 21, before she could practise extensively.

Rukhmabai Raut became one of India's earliest practising women doctors, but she is equally remembered for a courageous legal stand. Married as a child, when she reached adulthood, she refused to live with her husband. When he sued under the colonial doctrine of "restitution of conjugal rights," the case became a national sensation in the 1880s. It led directly into the reform movement that produced the Age of Consent Act of 1891. She faced the threat of imprisonment rather than submit. She ultimately won her freedom, then went to Britain and qualified as a physician at the London School of Medicine for Women. She returned to serve in India for decades.
The picture is of Sharda Mandir School in Mumbai which stands on land donated by Rukhmabai

Tessy Thomas is an aerospace scientist celebrated as India's "Missile Woman" and the first woman to head a missile project in the country. Within India's defence research organisation she served as project director on the long-range Agni series of ballistic missiles, leading guidance, mission and systems work. She is widely celebrated as a role model and speaks openly about balancing a high-pressure technical career with family life.

Mangala Mani is an ISRO scientist. At the age of 56, she became the first woman from the organisation to spend more than a year in Antarctica. She spent 403 days at India's Bharati research station. She was the only woman in a 23-member expedition. She operated and maintained the ground station there, tracking the satellite orbits visible from the continent. The expedition endured months of sub-zero isolation, blizzards and polar darkness. She had a diploma in radio apparatus and was only girl among eighty students. The BBC featured her in its 100 Women series. She volunteered for the hardest posting of her life in her mid-fifties.

Shakuntala Devi is known as the "human computer." She was born in Bengaluru. Her father was a circus trapeze artist, lion tamer and magician. He discovered her gift at age three while teaching her card tricks. In 1977, at Southern Methodist University, she calculated the 23rd root of a 201-digit number in 50 seconds, giving the answer 546,372,891. In 1980 she multiplied two randomly chosen 13-digit numbers in 28 seconds at Imperial College London, earning a place in the Guinness Book of World Records. That same year she stood for the Lok Sabha as an independent against Indira Gandhi in Medak, polling 6,514 votes.

Anna Mani, often called the "Weather Woman of India," was a physicist and meteorologist who made foundational contributions to India's capability in weather monitoring and renewable energy. After early research in C.V. Raman's laboratory, she moved into meteorology and rose to become Deputy Director General of the India Meteorological Department. She submitted her PhD but was not granted one as she did not have an MSc which was a pre-requisite for PhD.
She designed and standardised more than a hundred weather instruments, insisting on precision and indigenous self-reliance in instrumentation, and established a network of stations measuring solar radiation. Thid was the essential groundwork for later solar and wind energy assessment. She published widely and mentored others.

Bibha Chowdhuri was a physicist who contributed to particle physics and cosmic-ray research using photographic emulsion techniques. She did not have access to modern particle accelerators or cloud chambers. She and her collaborators carried specially prepared photographic emulsion plates to high Himalayan altitudes around Darjeeling and Sandakphu. They captured tracks left by cosmic rays and subatomic particles such as mesons. Her pioneering method anticipated approaches which were used by Nobel Prize awardee Cecil Powell, while her own foundational role went underappreciated for decades. The International Astronomical Union has now named a star in her honour. Denied cutting-edge equipment, she engineered a low-cost, high-altitude experimental method.

Maharani Kempananjammanni Vani Vilasa Sannidhana ruled the princely state of Mysore as Regent Queen from 1894 for her son minor Krishnaraja Wadiyar IV. When Jamsetji Tata sought a home for his research institute, her government granted 371 acres and 16 guntas of land in Bengaluru, funds for capital costs, and an annual contribution.
This guaranteed the location and funds for what became the Indian Institute of Science (IISc). Every engineer, scientist and Nobel-adjacent researcher who has passed through IISc owes something to that grant. History books dwell on her husband and son, yet it was her administration that made the campus possible. She is a powerful reminder that women have not only done science but have built the very ground it stands on.
The picture is of the first buildings that came up in IISc