Scientists occasionally experiment with art and music, and many succeed. Raja Ramanna was a pianist, Satyendra Nath Bose played the esraj, a violin-like instrument, and Homi Jehangir Bhabha was a painter and a great art connoisseur. Former Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) chief K. Radhakrishnan is a skilled Kathakali singer and dancer.

Can you, however, think of an Indian scientist who has made groundbreaking scientific discoveries, served as the head of one of the nation's most prestigious academic institutions, played professional cricket, and worked as a radio commentator, science writer, and photographer? For you, that is Chandrima Shaha. There are not many similarities between her varied personality and career in the current Indian scientific community.

Written by Rajinder Singh – a leading historian of science based in Oldenburg, Germany – along with Calcutta-based physicist Suprakash C Roy – the biography is titled Chandrima Shaha: A Lifelong Journey of Scientific Inquiry. Singh has made a mark with his biographies of Indian scientists – not just the likes of C.V. Raman and D.M. Bose but those of lesser-known figures of Indian science.

In recent years, he has brought to the public gaze many unsung scientists such as Bibha Chowdhury, Snehamoy Datta, Bal Mukund Anand and Purnima Sinha. Several scientists whose lives Singh has documented happen to be women, correcting the unsaid bias in conventional history telling. Chandrima’s biography is in the same series. 

In 2020, Chandrima was elected as the president of the Indian National Science Academy (INSA), the first woman to lead the academy which is celebrating 90 years of its founding this month. She is currently the J.C. Bose Chair distinguished professor (Infectious Diseases and Immunology) at CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, Kolkata.

Chandrima was born in Calcutta (now Kolkata) to accomplished parents – her father Shambhu Shaha was a creative photographer and her mother Karuna was a painter and singer. Shambhu Shaha is known for the perceptive pictures he shot of Rabindranath Tagore at Santiniketan during Tagore’s twilight years.

Tagore appreciated his work as he captured important cultural happenings at Santiniketan. The book contains a picture of young Chandrima with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru when he inaugurated an exhibition of Tagore’s pictures shot by Shambhu Shaha. In 2001, Chandrima wrote a book on her father. 

The atmosphere at the Shaha household was eclectic and creative, with frequent visits from artists, art lovers and contemporary intellectuals of the city including eminent scientific figure, Satyendra Nath Bose. The book contains a picture of Chandrima and her mother with famous painter M.F. Hussain. Chandrima shot a candid portrait of Hussain with her camera and it was later published in the Illustrated Weekly of India in 1973.

Chandrima’s interest in science was kindled in her childhood when her father gifted her a small telescope and encouraged her to look at stars and planets. Soon, she thought of becoming an astronomer. The aspiration changed when her father brought a monocular microscope from an auction house.

“A drop from a puddle formed by rainwater, examined under the microscope, opened an amazing world not visible to the naked eye. Moving creatures of various shapes and sizes visible under the microscope intrigued Chandrima. This was very different from the static view of the sky,” the book points out.

The young Chandrima would often wander into neighbours’ gardens to collect insects. Such visits opened her eyes to the beautiful phenomenon of metamorphosis – the transformation of a caterpillar to a butterfly and so on. Such exploration of the natural phenomena led her to dream of becoming a biologist – possibly the kind who wanders through jungles gathering insects to learn more about their existence. To further encourage her interest, her father gifted her the book on the origin of life by Charles Darwin on her fifteenth birthday.