Purnima Sinha

Early life Purnima was born on 12 October 1927 to a Hindu Baidya family from the village of Banshi in Tangail (present-day Bangladesh). She was the daughter of Dr. Nares Chandra Sen-Gupta, a constitutional lawyer and progressive writer. She married the anthropologist Surajit Chandra Sinha, former vice-chancellor of Visva-Bharati University, who made significant contributions to understanding the process of acculturation of tribal peoples in India.

Her daughters Supurna Sinha and Sukanya Sinha are physicists at Raman Research Institute and Indian Statistical Institute, respectively.

With her husband, she started an informal school, Mela Mesha r Pathshala in Shantiniketan, an institute for tribal children.

Education and career Sinha's early education started in Lake School for girls, in Kolkata, which was founded by her elder sister Sushama Sengupta. She then attended Asutosh College, followed by the Scottish Church College, and finally the prestigious Rajabazar Science College, University of Calcutta. She became the first woman to earn a PhD in Physics from Calcutta University in 1956. She was mentored by Professor Satyendra Nath Bose, a theoretical physicist known for his work in quantum mechanics.

Dr Purnima Sinha with Satyendra Nath Bose and Paul Dirac at Botanical Gardens in Calcutta during the 1954 visitSinha's career in science spanned several decades. She earned her doctorate in x-ray crystallography of clay minerals. She received her doctorate from the University of Calcutta as a student of the Rajabazar Science College in 1956–7, under the guidance of professor Satyendra Nath Bose. She was the first Bengali woman to receive a doctorate in physics. which had an interface with her work. She compared the X-ray structure of clay with DNA patterns, geometrically, and was fascinated to find a connection.

Publications Sinha wrote extensively on many subjects in both English and Bengali. She was a regular contributor to Jnan O Bijnan (Knowledge and Science), a Bengali-language scientific journal published by Bangiya Bijnan Parishad (Bengal Science Association), founded by Satyendra Nath Bose. Recently Bangiya Bigyan Parishad awarded and felicitated her for popularizing science in Bengali, a passion she shared with her teacher. She wrote the book An Approach to the Study of Indian Music in 1970, and articles about folk music based on folk music recordings done in the field by her husband and her during anthropological field studies in the tribal regions of Purulia in West Bengal. She wrote the analytical article "Jarawa Songs and Vedic Chant: A Comparison of Melodic Pattern" for the Journal of Asiatic Society in 2005, based on their field trip to the Andaman Islands in 1988.

She wrote extensively on Satyendra Nath Bose, including:

Bijnan Sadhanar Dharay Satyendranath Bose, book published by Visva Vidya Sangraha Amar Katha, book published by Bangiya Bijnan Parishad , article published in Desh

Her artistic interests were varied and included learning Hindustani classical music from Yamini Ganguly, and painting from the well-known painter Gopal Ghosh. She also took tabla lessons from Pandit Jnan Prakash Ghosh. Her other interests included sculpting and painting.