Sudipta Sengupta

Sudipta Sengupta is a professor in

Sengupta was the youngest daughter of three, born to Jyoti Ranjan Sengupta and Pushpa Sengupta in Calcutta, India. Her father was a meteorologist and their family spent a lot of time in both India and Nepal.

She says she "comes from the land of Durga. We worship Durga and as a child, I believed that she lived in Kailash. Now, I know that Durga lives in us, in all women."

Early career

Sudipta Sengupta graduated from

Sengupta recounts that "for the first 15 years of my life, there were hardly any women in the class - in most of the years none." She talks about the fact that the university wasn't prepared to accommodate women during field-trips. Conditions didn't improve until 1996, Sengupta says "In our times, it was terrible. We stayed in dharamshalas and sometimes huts." Sengupta also talks about the fact that in some ways it was better in her days. She went on her PhD studied alone and traveled to remote places with "bad roads and no communication, but never felt unsafe" but that these days she "wouldn't dare to send a girl alone for field work."[3]^[4]

Mountaineering

Sudipta Sengupta is an expert mountaineer and was trained in Advanced Mountaineering by Tenzing Norgay in the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute. Tenzing Norgay was one of the first two men to scale Mt Everest in 1953. She has participated in numerous mountaineering expeditions in India and Europe, including an unnamed virgin peak in the Lahaul Region, which they later named Mount Lalona.

Sengupta remembers that her field work taught her much. She says "people are the same everywhere. They are basically good and helpful" even if "to seen an Indian girl moving around with a hammer was very new for them."^[4]

Antarctic expedition and research

In 1983, Sudipta Sengupta was selected as a member of the

She talks about her experience in Antarctica and says that the Geology prejudices extended to that land as well. She says "Antarctica was also a male bastion, women scientists weren't allowed there before 1956." She remembers men joking that a woman couldn't go without a beauty parlor in Antarctica. In 1982 she applied to join an Indian Expedition to Antarctica but her application was rejected because she was a woman. She was later taken on expeditions in 1982 and 1989.^[4]

On both expeditions, she traveled on ships taking a month to get there. Once they were on land, the crew had to work during blizzards and a Sun that never set. In the days that she went to Antarctica, India only had one base station — Dakshin Gangotri, which now is not in function and is fully submerged in ice. The Maitri station was already up and running by then in Schirmacher Oasis in East Antarctica and is still an active research base.^[3]

Publications and awards

Professor Sengupta has published numerous papers in Indian as well as international journals. She has edited a book with contributions by renowned structural geologists and also authored a book on her travels and work in Antarctica which has become a best seller in West Bengal. She was awarded the

• Kshitindramohan Naha
• Timeline of women in science

References