Kadambini Ganguly

Born: 18 July 1861

Died: 3 October 1923

• She was the first female graduate from India as well as from the entire British Empire.
• She, herself, was also the first Indian as well as South Asian female physician, trained in western medicine, to graduate in South Asia.
• She studied medicine at the Calcutta Medical College.
• In 1886, she was given a Graduate of Bengal Medical College degree.
• She thus became one of the two, Anandi Gopal Joshi being the other, Indian women doctors who qualified to practice western medicine.
• Also, another Indian woman by the name of Abala Bose passed entrance in 1881 but was refused admission to the medical college and went to Madras (now Chennai) to study medicine but never graduated.
• She overcame some opposition from the teaching staff and orthodox sections of society.
• She went to the United Kingdom in 1892 and returned to India after qualifying as LRCP (Edinburgh), LRCS (Glasgow), and GFPS (Dublin).
• After working for a short period in Lady Dufferin Hospital, she started her own private practice.
• She was one of the six female delegates to the fifth session of the Indian National Congress in 1889, and even organized the Women’s Conference in Calcutta in 1906 in the aftermath of the partition of Bengal.
• In 1908, she had also organized and presided over a Calcutta meeting for expressing sympathy with Satyagraha – inspired Indian laborers in Transvaal, South Africa.
• She formed an association to collect money with the help of fundraisers to assist the workers.