Janaki Ammal

Janaki Ammal ജാനകി അമ്മാൾ
File:Janaki Ammal.jpg Janaki Ammal
Born	(1897-09-04)4 September 1897 Tellicherry, Kerala
Died	7 February 1984(1984-02-07) (aged 86)
Nationality	Indian
Scientific career
Fields	Botany, Cytology
Institutions	University Botany Laboratory, Madras

Janaki Ammal Edavaleth Kakkat was an Indian botanist who conducted scientific research in cytogenetics and geography. Her most notable work involves those on sugarcane and eggplant. She has collected various valuable plants of medicinal and economic value from the rain forests of Kerala.

Early life

Janaki Ammal was born in 1897, in Tellichery, Kerala. Her father was a sub-judge of the Madras Presidency. She had six brothers and five sisters. In her family, girls were encouraged to engage in intellectual pursuits and in the fine arts, but Ammal chose to study botany. After schooling in Tellichery, she moved to Madras where she obtained the bachelor’s degree from Queen Mary’s College, and an honours degree in botany from Presidency College in 1921. Under the influence of teachers at the Presidency College, Ammal acquired a passion to cytogenetics.

Career

Ammal taught at Women’s Christian College, Madras, with a sojourn as a Barbour Scholar at the University of Michigan in the USA where she obtained her master’s degree in 1925. Returning to India, she continued to teach at the Women's Christian College. She went to Michigan again as the first Oriental Barbour Fellow and obtained her D.Sc. in 1931. She returned as Professor of Botany at the Maharaja’s College of Science, Trivandrum, and taught there from 1932 to 1934. From 1934 to 1939 she worked as geneticist at the Sugarcane Breeding Institute, Coimbatore. From 1940 to 1945 she worked as Assistant Cytologist at the John Innes Horticultural Institution in London, and as cytologist at the Royal Horticultural Society at Wisley from 1945 to 1951. On the invitation of Jawaharlal Nehru, she returned to India in 1951 to reorganize the Botanical Survey of India (BSI). Ammal made several intergeneric hybrids: Saccharum x Zea, Saccharum x Erianthus, Saccharum x Imperata and Saccharum x Sorghum. Ammal’s work at the Institute on the cytogenetics of Saccharum officinarum (sugarcane) and interspecific and intergeneric hybrids involving sugarcane and related grass species and genera such as Bambusa (bamboo) were epochal. From then onwards, Ammal was in the service of the government of India in various capacities including heading the Central Botanical Laboratory at Allahabad, and was officer on special duty at the Regional Research Laboratory in Jammu. She worked for a brief period at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre at Trombay before settling down in Madras in November 1970 as an Emeritus Scientist at the Centre for Advanced Study in Botany, University of Madras. She lived and worked in the Centre’s Field Laboratory at Maduravoyal near Madras until her demise in February 1984.

Research

During the years (1939–1950) she spent in England, she did chromosome studies of a wide range of garden plants. Her studies on chromosome numbers and ploidy in many cases threw light on the evolution of species and varieties. The Chromosome Atlas of Cultivated Plants which she wrote jointly with C. D. Darlington in 1945 was a compilation that incorporated much of her own work on many species. Ammal also worked on the genera Solanum, Datura, Mentha, Cymbopogon and Dioscorea besides medicinal and other plants. She attributed the higher rate of plant speciation in the cold and humid northeast Himalayas as compared to the cold and dry northwest Himalayas to polyploidy. Also, according to her, the confluence of Chinese and Malayan elements in the flora of northeast India led to natural hybridization between these and the native flora in this region, contributing further to plant diversification. Following her retirement, Ammal continued to work focussing special attention on medicinal plants and ethnobotany. She continued to publish the original findings of her research. In the Centre of Advanced Study Field Laboratory where she lived and worked she developed a garden of medicinal plants. She also worked on cytology and ethnobotany.

Awards and honors

Ammal was elected Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences in 1935, and of the Indian National Science Academy in 1957. The University of Michigan conferred an honorary LL.D. on her in 1956. The Government of India conferred the Padmashri on her in 1957. In 2000, the Ministry of Environment and Forestry of the Government of India instituted the National Award of Taxonomy in her name in 2000.