Meet Gagandeep Kang, first Indian woman elected Royal Society Fellow

Gagandeep Kang talks about the challenges and thrill of breaking new ground

When Benjamin Franklin used a kite and a key to demonstrate the electrical nature of lightning in 1752, the Royal Society — the oldest independent scientific academy in continuous existence since 1660 — published the account of the famous experiment. Before him, it had published Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica describing the action of gravity, and later the works of Charles Babbage (“the father of computing”), Charles Darwin (“the father of evolution”) and Albert Einstein. Till 1945, the Royal Society had only men as fellows. And until this year, not one of its few women fellows was from India. Gagandeep Kang