Vox Meditantis

Here was a woman who revolutionised India’s agriculture, co-authored one of botany’s most important reference works, and saved an entire forest ecosystem from destruction. Yet Edavalath Kakkat Janaki Ammal remains largely unknown, her contributions buried beneath layers of colonial dismissal and post-independence amnesia. This is the reality for women in science—their work endures whilst their names fade into obscurity.

Breaking Barriers in a Rigid World

Born on 4 November 1897 in Thalassery, Kerala, Janaki Ammal entered a world that had already decided her fate. In 1913, literacy amongst women in India stood at less than one per cent. Most girls from her Tiyya caste background were destined for arranged marriages by age sixteen. The very idea of higher education for women was radical; pursuing science was almost unthinkable.

Yet Ammal’s family environment proved crucial. Her father, Diwan Bahadur Edavalath Kakkat Krishnan, served as deputy collector of Malabar district and maintained a pristine garden that sparked his daughter’s fascination with botany. Her mother, Devi, was the mixed-race daughter of John Child Hannyngton, creating what one scholar describes as a “conflicting blend of two cultures”. This background of cultural complexity and social marginality would shape Ammal’s entire career.

The family faced substantial social challenges. As “White Tiyyas,” they occupied an ambiguous position in Kerala’s rigid caste hierarchy. Ammal’s father had married across racial lines, causing a significant loss of status within their community. Yet rather than succumbing to social pressure, the family embraced education as a path to dignity and advancement.

Academic Excellence Against All Odds

When Ammal’s sisters entered arranged marriages, she made a different choice. She pursued education with single-minded determination, obtaining her bachelor’s degree from Queen Mary’s College in Madras, followed by an honours degree in botany from Presidency College in 1921. These achievements were extraordinary considering the literacy rates amongst women at the time.

Her trajectory took a decisive turn when she secured the prestigious Barbour Scholarship to the University of Michigan in 1924. The journey to America itself proved challenging—she was detained at Ellis Island due to her immigrant status. But once established at Michigan, she thrived under the supervision of Professor Harley Harris Bartlett in the Department of Botany.

Ammal’s doctoral thesis, “Chromosome Studies in Nicandra Physaloides,” completed in 1931, made her the first Indian woman to receive a PhD in botany in the United States. This achievement cannot be overstated. At a time when Indian women were largely excluded from higher education, she was conducting cutting-edge research at one of America’s finest public universities.

Revolutionary Work in Plant Breeding

Returning to India in 1932, Ammal initially taught at Maharaja’s College of Science in Trivandrum. But her real breakthrough came in 1934 when she joined the Sugarcane Breeding Institute in Coimbatore as a geneticist. Here, working alongside Charles Alfred Barber and T.S. Venkataraman, she would transform Indian agriculture.

The challenge was formidable. India had long imported its sweetest sugarcane varieties from Papua New Guinea, as local varieties couldn’t match the sugar content of Saccharum officinarum. Through meticulous cross-breeding and manipulation of polyploid cells, Ammal created high-yielding sugarcane strains perfectly adapted to Indian conditions. Her work established that Saccharum spontaneum, a hardy local variety, had actually originated in India—overturning colonial assumptions about Indian agricultural inferiority.

Ammal’s intergeneric hybrids were groundbreaking. She successfully crossed sugarcane with maize (Saccharum x Zea), sorghum (Saccharum x Sorghum), and other grass species. These achievements weren’t mere academic exercises—they directly addressed India’s food security. The “Co varieties” developed at Coimbatore became internationally renowned, grown across India and preferred in other sugarcane-producing countries.

International Recognition and Collaboration

In 1940, Ammal moved to England to work at the prestigious John Innes Institute. Her collaboration with cytogeneticist C.D. Darlington proved transformative for both scientists. Together, they produced the Chromosome Atlas of Cultivated Plants in 1945—a work that remains an essential reference for botanical research worldwide.

From 1945 to 1951, she worked as a cytologist at the Royal Horticultural Society at Wisley. Here, she pioneered techniques using colchicine to double plant chromosomes, creating larger, faster-growing varieties. Her work with magnolia hybridisation was so significant that both a magnolia variety and a hybrid rose were named in her honour.

During this period, Ammal became the first woman employed as a scientist by the Royal Horticultural Society. She also earned fellowships from the Linnean Society of London, the Royal Geographical Society, and other prestigious institutions. Yet despite this international recognition, her contributions were often overshadowed by her male colleagues.

Conservation Pioneer and Environmental Champion

Nehru’s personal invitation brought Ammal back to India in the early 1950s to serve as the first director of the Central Botanical Laboratory in Lucknow. Her mission was clear: create a national platform for genetic studies and systematically survey India’s floral diversity. This work proved crucial as post-independence India struggled with severe famines.

But Ammal grew increasingly concerned about the environmental cost of the government’s Grow More Food Campaign, which had reclaimed 25 million acres through extensive deforestation. In a letter to Darlington, she expressed her distress: “I went 37 miles from Shillong in search of the only tree of Magnolia griffithii in that part of Assam and found that it had been burnt down”.

Her most celebrated environmental victory came in the 1970s. When the government planned to flood 8.3 square kilometres of Silent Valley’s pristine evergreen forest for a hydroelectric project, Ammal joined the protest movement. At 80 years old, she used her scientific authority to argue for preservation, conducting a chromosomal survey of the valley’s unique flora. The campaign succeeded—the project was abandoned and Silent Valley became a national park in November 1984. Tragically, Ammal had died nine months earlier, never seeing her final triumph.

The Persistence of Marginalisation

Why has Janaki Ammal been forgotten? The answer lies in intersecting systems of oppression that shaped her entire career. As a woman in science, she faced gender discrimination that relegated her contributions to footnotes in her male colleagues’ biographies. As an Indian scientist during the colonial period, her work was systematically devalued by European institutions that refused to recognise non-Western expertise.

Even within India, caste prejudice followed her throughout her career. Despite her international acclaim, she was passed over for senior positions in favour of European scientists. When the Botanical Survey of India needed a new director, the government appointed Hermenegild Santapau, a European, to a position that rightfully belonged to Ammal.

The systematic exclusion of her plant specimens from Indian herbaria meant that “modern research on the flora of India can be conducted more intensely outside India than within this country”. This colonial knowledge extraction continues to shape how Indian scientific contributions are remembered and valued.

A Legacy Written in Living Systems

Today, Janaki Ammal’s work survives in the sweetness of Indian sugar, the biodiversity of Silent Valley, and the magnolias blooming at Wisley. Her Chromosome Atlas remains an indispensable reference seven decades after publication. The sugarcane varieties she developed continue feeding millions.

Yet her personal story—of a woman who chose scholarship over marriage, who challenged both colonial and patriarchal authority, who understood that science must serve justice—remains largely untold. This silence isn’t accidental. It reflects the persistent reluctance to acknowledge how women, particularly women of colour, have shaped modern science.

Ammal herself believed that “my work is what will survive”. She was right—but incomplete recognition isn’t enough. Her name deserves to stand alongside Darwin, Mendel, and other giants of biological science. Only then will we begin to understand the true history of scientific progress.

Bob Lynn | © 2025 Vox Meditantis. All rights reserved.