Born: 24 January 1922, India
Died: 3 September 2010
Country most active: India
Also known as: NA
The following bio was written by Emma Rosen, author of On This Day She Made History: 366 Days With Women Who Shaped the World and This Day In Human Ingenuity & Discovery: 366 Days of Scientific Milestones with Women in the Spotlight, and has been republished with permission.
Rajeshwari Chatterjee was an Indian scientist and an accomplished academic. She was the first female engineer from Karnataka and a prominent figure at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore, where she served as a distinguished professor and later as the chair of the Electrical Communication Engineering department.
Rajeshwari Chatterjee attended the Central College of Bangalore, where she earned her B.Sc. (Hons) and M.Sc. degrees in mathematics, achieving the top rank in both exams at Mysore University. She received accolades, including the Mummadi Krishnaraja Wodeyar Award and the M.T. Narayana Iyengar Prize for her B.Sc. performance and the Walters Memorial Prize for her M.Sc. accomplishments.
Following World War II, she was identified as a “bright student” by the Government of Delhi and received a scholarship to pursue further studies abroad. She chose the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in the United States for her higher education. In 1953, after completing her Ph.D., she returned to India and joined the faculty at the IISc Department of Electrical Communication Engineering, where she taught courses such as electromagnetic theory, electron tube circuits, microwave technology, and radio engineering. In the same year, she married Sisir Kumar Chatterjee, a fellow faculty member at the college. Together, they established a pioneering microwave research laboratory, marking the initiation of Microwave Engineering research in India.