RIGHTS OF PASSAGE IN HYDERABAD INDIA
Tea and cucumber sandwiches with the only female Nobel Laureate, Dorothy Hodgkin and tea and banana breakfasts with a Ghandi!
In early 1979, I was awarded a visiting science fellowship by the British Council at the University of Hyderabad, India. And, amongst a range of life affirming and memorable experiences, I was the only guest of honour at a reception for Dorothy at the new university being created out of the semi arid desert outside the city of Hyderabad. Given her outstanding achievements you can imagine my astonishment to be introduced by the Vice Chancellor G.B. Singh (himself an eminent Harvard educated chemist) to Dorothy in a scarlet carpeted elegant tent-bedecked with sumptuous flowers – in the grounds of the emerging new campus and spent a pleasant and stimulating hour alone with her, eating carefully crafted cucumber sandwiches (without crusts!) following her lecture to a hundred or so academic staff and students. We spoke of her early career as a research scientist which clearly interested me as it linked directly to my then status! I later learned more about Dorothy as she was one of Margret Thatcher’s professors at Oxford and held in great esteem by our PM, such that she had a picture of Dorothy in her office in number 10.During MT’s time as PM, I worked as an HMI (education) with national responsibility for environmental and technical education and drafted key reports for her secretary of state for education (Sir Keith Joseph).
Early in my time at Hyderabad I was also immensely proud to be introduced to ProfessorRamchandra (Ramu) Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi. Already an eminent Indian philosopher, he was the son of Devdas Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi’s youngest son) and Lakshmi (daughter of C. Rajagopalachari another eminent writer and politician. Ramchandra Gandhi obtained his doctoral degree in philosophy from Oxford where he was a student of Sir Peter Strawson. Ramu is known for founding the philosophy department at the University of Hyderabad. He and I routinely breakfasted on bananas and tea on the balcony of his tiny office in Hyderbad itself. And, he and colleagues introduced me to the idea of environmental philosophy and ways of encouraging deeper moral and ethical ways of approaching what has become my lasting career trajectory in the field of education and sustainability. And, he leaves a deep and lasting memory of him attending my 35th birthday party at the university guest house and his gift of his maternal grandfather’s book, Ramayana.
(Hodgkin won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work on the structure of penicillin and insulin. As of 2016 she remained the only British woman scientist to have been awarded a Nobel Prize in any of the three sciences it recognises. In 1965 she was only the second woman and the first in almost 60 years, after Florence Nightingale in 1907, to be appointed to the Order of Merit. She was the first and, as of 2018, remains the only woman to receive the prestigious Copley Medal and elected to a fellowship of the Royal Society in 1947.And, she had an asteroid named after her in 1983!)
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