Leading Indian scientist Soumya Swaminathan was on Tuesday elected Fellow of the Royal Society, the world’s oldest scientific academy in continuous existence.Soumya follows in the footsteps of her late father, Bharat Ratna MS Swaminathan, who was also a Fellow at the Royal Society.With this honour, Soumya entered the coveted league of scientists of the order of Issac Newton.Sharing the news just as it was announced in London today, Raghunath Mashelkar, former DG, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and ex-President, Indian National Science Academy, said, “Dr Soumya Swaminathan has been elected as FRS, Fellow of Royal Society, one of the highest global hours that a scientist can receive. With her father Bharat Ratna MS Swaminathan Swaminathan also elected as FRS, this is the first daughter-father FRS duo from India.”Soumya also becomes only the second Indian woman scientist being elected in the over 400 years history of Royal Society, the first being Prof Gagandeep Kang.Earlier, Kang was the first woman working in India to be elected to the Society in 2019.She was awarded the fellowship in recognition of her contributions to vaccine development in India and establishment of training programmes in clinical translational medicine. Soumya is principal adviser to the National Tuberculosis Elimination Programme.In her role, she is leading the strategy to achieve TB elimination targets by suggesting policy directions and course corrections. She was Chief Scientist at the World Health Organisation at the height of Covid-19 and Director General of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).