Rajeshwari Chatterjee

Rajeshwari Chatterjee (24 January 1922 – 3 September 2010) was an Indian scientist and an academic. She was the first woman engineer from Karnataka and described herself as an engineering-scientist.

In 1943, after her M.Sc., Chatterjee joined the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore as a Research Student in the then Electrical Technology Department in the area of Communication.

She approached physicist C.V. Raman to work under him. Some sources say that Raman refused to take her, stating that Rajeshwari had no degrees in physics, while others say that he was averse to the idea of having women students.

After the Second World War, an interim government was set up in India to transfer power from the British to Indians, which offered scholarships to bright young scientists to study abroad. Chatterjee applied for a scholarship in the field of electronics and its applications, and in 1946, she was selected as a "bright student" by the Government of Delhi and given a scholarship to go abroad to pursue higher studies. Chatterjee chose to study in University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in the United States.

Career in India

In 1953, after obtaining her PhD degree, she returned to India and became a faculty member at the IISc Department of Electrical Communication Engineering, later saying that she taught "electromagnetic theory, electron tube circuits, microwave technology, and radio engineering".

Following her retirement from the IISc in 1982, She also preferred to call herself an "engineering-scientist", as she did not work in industry like most engineers.

Personal life Rajeshwari's father, B.M. Shivaramajah, was an advocate in Nanjangud. Her grandmother, Kamalamma Dasappa, was one of the first women graduates in the erstwhile state of Mysore.