Shipra Guha-Mukherjee

Shipra Guha-Mukherjee died on 15 September 2007 due to brain cancer after writing the piece for Lilavati's Daughters.

Then she returned to Jawaharlal Nehru University to join the new Life Science Faculty as one of its founding internet. She was promoted to full professor in 1979 and served as the dean of life sciences between 1993 and 1995. She also served as member of the task force and scientific advisory committee, Department of Biotechnology, Government of India, and also on the board of the University Grants Commission.

Guha-Mukherjee then went to the US in late 1966 and worked with R. S. Bandurski at the Department of Botany and Plant Pathology as a research associate at Michigan State University. Between 1970 and 1972 she served as an assistant professor in the Biology Department at West Virginia University and later at the well-known MSU/DOE Plant Research Laboratory when Anton Lang and Joe Varner were there. After her return to India, Shipra Guha-Mukherjee collaborated with M. S. Swaminathan for raising haploids in rice.

She was professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. Her field of specialization was plant tissue culture, plant molecular biology, biotechnology and cell biology. After her PhD, Guha-Mukherjee joined the lab of S. C. Maheshwari as a postdoctoral fellow, where she did her most significant work. Between 1964 and 1966, she discovered the technique of production of haploid pollen plants through anther culture using Datura innoxia as the culture material, which has been published in the journal In Vitro Cellular & Developmental Biology. This work led to the establishment of techniques of culture of young ovules and ovaries. This technique has also been used as an additional tool for obtaining improved varieties of rice, wheat, potato and other crops. She has also worked on regeneration of plants and mechanism of regeneration involving various enzymes, membrane phospholipids and second messengers during her time at the School of Life Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi.

Shipra Guha-Mukherjee (13 July 1938 – 15 September 2007) was an Indian botanist who worked on plant tissue culture, plant molecular biology, biotechnology and cell molecular biology. She died in 2007 as a result of brain cancer. Shipra Guha Mukharji the woman scientist who was behind the breakthrough discovery of "The technique of production of haploid plants through anther culture."

Shipra Guha-Mukherjee was born in Kolkata on 13 July 1938. She did her schooling in Bombay and Delhi and joined Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi for her BSc Botany (Hons) in 1954. She remained in Jawaharlal Nehru University, first as student and then as professor and researcher, for more than 30 years. She completed her MSc from there as well. She then went on to do her PhD under Prof. B. M. Johri on the tissue culture of an onion and completed her PhD at 1963 (Allium cepa).