Gagandeep KangSoon after globally renowned pediatrician and tuberculosis researcher Soumya Swaminathan was elected Fellow of the Royal Society on Tuesday, a Tamil Nadu story also came up.In the frame of reference were two citations — the first of Chennai born Soumya and the second of Vellore-linked Gagandeep Kang — the only two Indian women scientists to be elected Royal Society Fellows, a league made rich by the presence of Issac Newton.Apart from cutting edge clinical research that binds the two, the Tamil Nadu link of Soumya and Kang is remarkable.While Soumya was born in Chennai to MS Swaminathan, the celebrated agriculture scientist and Bharat Ratna, Kang spent most part of her active research life at Christian Medical College, Vellore.There is something about Chennai, the city that has honed women leaders, especially in science.In 1907, Muthulakshmi Reddy from Chennai was the first woman to be admitted as a medical student at the Madras Medical College and in 1912 became the first woman doctor in India.Soumya, former chief scientist at WHO and Secretary, Health Research India, was born here and spent decades researching tuberculosis and HIV at the National Institute for Research in Tuberculosis (NIRT), Chennai, an Indian Council of Medical Research lab.The Royal Society has feted Soumya for her global health leadership.Previously DG ICMR, Soumya is famed for pioneering research in pediatric tuberculosis and for highlighting the critical interplay between malnutrition and HIV in patients with TB and spotlighting vulnerabilities of marginalized communities. Her work also strengthened modern TB diagnostics.Kang, who was born in Shimla and has roots in Punjab’s Samrala, spent years at CMC Vellore, around 130 km from Chennai.She led the development of the indigenous Rotavirus vaccine which works to prevent child deaths from diarrhoeal diseases every year.The Rotavirus vaccine (RVV) was fully included in India’s Universal Immunization Programme (UIP) and is now provided free of cost at government facilities.The scale of Kang’s work is evident from the fact that the Rotavirus vaccine will prevent several child deaths from diarrhoeal diseases every year. Government data show India loses 1.5 lakh children under five to diarrhoea annually. Of these, 50 percent deaths are due to Rotavirus.Besides Soumya and Kang, who made Tamil Nadu their nursery for scientific excellence, N Kalaiselvi, who became the first woman director of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research in 2022, is also originally from Tamil Nadu.She spent 25 years working on lithium-ion battery chemistry in Chennai and made history by becoming the first woman Director General of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in the institution’s 80 year history.