K. Janaki Ammal was born in Kerala, India on November 4th, 1897. One of the first women in the U.S. to earn a doctorate in botany, she went on to develop new hybrids of sugarcane. After shifting here focus to research, she published The Chromosome Atlas of Cultivated Plants.
Olive Muriel Pink would spent a decade conducting research on the eastern Arrernte of Alice Springs and the Warlpiri of the Tanami region. She grew to be a passionate activist for aboriginal rights (in fact, historian Julie Marcus suggests that Pink ultimately left academia because she felt it was not serving her activist goals).
