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Many students who want to study medicine picture a career of treating patients one at a time. Muthulakshmi Reddy did that, and then built institutions and changed laws that affected far more people. This post sets out what is on record about her life, how the Adyar Cancer Institute began and grew, and what you can take from her way of working.
Who was Muthulakshmi Reddy?
A profile in The Hindu describes her as the daughter of Chandrammal and Narayanaswamy, principal of the Maharaja's College in Pudukkottai. When she was admitted to the Maharaja's High School, parents of boys threatened to withdraw their sons. She went on to become the first girl student of the college, and later the first Indian girl student in the Department of Surgery at Madras Medical College.
The history page of Madras Medical College (archived copy) records that she became the first Indian woman to get a medical degree from the University of Madras, in 1912. It notes that a woman from Ceylon, Mrs A. M. Vangngen, had been the first woman overall. That kind of detail matters: "first" claims are easy to overstate, so check what exactly was first.
What did she do as a lawmaker?
According to The Hindu, in 1927 she was nominated to the Madras Presidency's legislative council and chosen as its first woman deputy president. She campaigned to raise the age of marriage for girls, for women's right to property, and against the dedication of young girls as devadasis. She organised meetings across the Madras Presidency and interviewed several hundred devadasis.
The Hindu adds that the bill stalled after she resigned from the council in 1930 in protest at Mahatma Gandhi's arrest after the Salt March. The Madras Devadasi (Prevention of Dedication) bill was finally passed in December 1947. Along the way, two girls running away from dedication asked her what alternative she could offer. When no hostel or school would take them, she started the Avvai Home in 1936 to give them shelter, schooling and choice.
How did the Cancer Institute begin?
The Cancer Institute (WIA)'s own history page says it was established in 1954, founded by Dr Muthulakshmi Reddy and nurtured by Dr S. Krishnamurthi and Dr V. Shanta. It began as a cottage hospital with 12 beds.
How did it grow?
The institute's milestones page lists its own record of firsts. In its words, these include introducing a cobalt-60 teletherapy unit in 1956, establishing a medical physics department in 1957, starting the first paediatric oncology centre in the country in 1960, and hosting the Madras Metropolitan Tumour Registry set up by the Indian Council of Medical Research in 1981. These are the institute's descriptions of itself, so read them as such.
Today, the history page says, it has over 675 patient beds, a research division, a college of oncological sciences and a preventive oncology division running screening programmes across Tamil Nadu. It manages about 15,000 new patients and 160,000 follow-up patients each year, and many are treated free or at heavily subsidised cost.
Here is what the growth looks like in numbers. From 12 beds to 675 beds is an increase of 663 beds. Dividing 675 by 12 gives 56.25, so the institute now has more than 56 times the beds it started with.
How was she recognised?
The Government of India's list of Padma awardees (archived copy) records a Padma Bhushan for Dr Muthulakshmi Reddi in the field of medicine in 1956, two years after the institute opened.
What can a student take from her way of working?
Treat barriers as starting points. She entered schools that did not expect girls and kept going. If a path looks closed, find out the actual rule rather than the assumed one.
Work at more than one scale. She treated patients, changed laws and built an institution. Ask how a skill you are learning could help one person, then many.
Answer the practical question. When two girls asked "what is the alternative?", she built one. Good ideas need a next step.
Build for the long term. A 12-bed hospital became a major centre because others carried it on after her.
To connect her story to your syllabus, read our guide to cancer biology for NEET, and the story of another Indian pioneer, Kamal Ranadive and cancer research. If the cell cycle and how cancer cells escape its controls still feel unclear, the Fermi Concept Library has every concept in physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics and computing, so you can review that idea on its own.
Next step: read the Cancer Institute's milestones page and note which entries involve physics, chemistry or data, not just medicine.
