Everything you need to know about Dr. Kamal Ranadive

Ranadive was born in Pune on 8 November 1917.

Her parents were Dinkar Dattatreya Samarath and Shantabai Dinkar Samarath. Her father was a biologist who taught at Fergusson College, Pune.

He ensured that all his children were well educated. Ranadive was a bright student. She had her schooling at the Huzurpaga: the H. H. C. P. High School.

Her father wanted her to study medicine and also marry a doctor, but she decided otherwise. She started her college education at Fergusson College with Botany and Zoology as her main subjects. She earned her Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) degree with distinction in 1934.

She then moved to the Agriculture College at Pune where she did her master’s degree (M.Sc.) in 1943 with cytogenetics of annonaceae as the special subject. She then married J. T. Ranadive, a mathematician, on 13 May 1939 and moved to Bombay. They had a son, named Anil Jaysingh.

In Bombay (now known as Mumbai), she worked at the Tata Memorial Hospital. Her husband, Ranadive, was a great help in her postgraduate studies in Cytology; this subject had been chosen by her father.

Here, she also worked for her doctoral degree (Doctor of Philosophy) at the Bombay University. Her guide was V. R. Khanolkar, a pathologist of repute and the founder of the Indian Cancer Research Centre (ICRC).

After she received her Ph.D. from the University of Bombay in 1949, she was encouraged by Khanolkar to seek a fellowship at an American University.

She obtained a postdoctoral research fellowship to work on tissue culture techniques and work with George Gey (famous for his laboratory innovation, the HeLa cell line) in his laboratory at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.