T.K. Radha: from Kerala to Oppenheimer
The Hindu
Discover the inspiring journey of T.K. Radha, a pioneering woman in STEM who met Oppenheimer in the 1960s.
In the late 1930s, in a small corner of Thayyur, Thrissur, a couple had their third girl child, and no one ever predicted that she would later become one of the first Indian women and Malayali to meet the father of the atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer. This is the story of T.K. Radha.
Growing up in a village, T.K. Radha often described her childhood through studying under kerosene lamps surrounded by nature. Quite good at studies, her sisters motivated their parents to send Radha to study intermediate (class 11 and 12 at present times).
She then went on to study at Stella Maris College in Chennai (erstwhile Madras) and managed to score a 100% in mathematics and 98% in Physics. Due to her keen interest in the subject, she went on to do a Physics honours degree at Presidency College despite societal concerns about it being a co-education system.
Passing with flying colours and a gold medal from Presidency College, Radha then decided to pursue a master’s degree in Nuclear Physics at Madras University under the mentorship of Professor Aladi Ramakrishnan. Particle Physics was an upcoming subject back then, and Radha was able to explore the same more during this period. Being an upcoming university filled with a brilliant generation of Indian researchers, several foreign phycists Robert Marshak, and Niels Bohr often visited their campus, giving them much bigger exposure in the world of physics.
Radha went on to complete her PhD under Professor Alladi Ramakrishnan and even attended a cummer school on Elementary Particle physics in Trieste, Italy. This caught the eye of two eminent physicists of the time, Professor Leonard I. Schiff and Professor Robert Marshak, who both offered her post-doctoral fellowships at universities like Stanford and Rochester. This, in the 1960s, is the testimony to her brilliance in the field.
It was in 1965 that the historical turning point of T.K. Radha’s life came when J. Robert Oppenheimer himself sent a letter to her inviting her to spend an academic year at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Princeton.
