Sipra Guha-Mukherjee

Ph.D. (1963, Delhi), FASc, FNASc. A recipient of the Senior National Bio-scientist Award, the Om Prakash Bhasin Foundation Award in Biotechnology and the Kanishka Award. She was Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. Her field of specialization was plant tissue culture, plant molecular biology, biotechnology and cell biology. She passed away in September 2007 after writing this piece for Lilavati's Daughters.

An excerpt from the publication "Successfully combating prejudice":
"I decided to study botany because it was my favorite subject in school. As a school student I was awed by the contribution of Sir Jagdish Chandra Bose, and fascinated by his work that showed that plants were living organisms and had a metabolism similar to that of animals. His hypothesis that ascent of sap in plants is due to pulsatory activity of an inner layer of cortical cells (a theory no longer tenable) infused a huge excitement in me, as earlier I used to think that plants were inert objects which could never respond to any external stimuli. As a student in classes five and six, I developed a strong determination to find the locations of the “heart” and “brain” of plants and to understand the way they functioned. "