Padmavathy Bandopadhyay | Medicine | Uttar Pradesh | Awarded Padma Shri | 2020

 

Air Marshal Padma Bandopadhyay, PVSM, AVSM, VSM, PHS (born 4 November 1944) is a decorated former flight surgeon in the Indian Air Force. She was the first woman to be promoted to the rank of Air Marshal in the Indian Air Force. She is the second woman in the Indian Armed Forces to be promoted to a three-star rank, after Surgeon Vice Admiral Punita Arora.

Early Life

Bandopadhyay was born as Padmavathy Swaminathan on 4 November 1944  at Tirupathi, Andhra Pradesh into a Tamil speaking Iyer family. When Padma was four or five years old, her mother contracted tuberculosis and eventually became bedridden. Therefore, medical issues began occupying Padma's mind space since the time she was very young, and she also became her mother's primary caregiver at a relatively young age. In addition, her neighbor in the Gole Market neighborhood in New Delhi was Dr. S. I. Padmavati, Professor of Medicine at Lady Hardinge Medical College. Padma has said that her experience with her mother's illness and hospitalization at Safdarjung Hospital, and having a neighbouring lady doctor with the same name as her were early motivations to become a doctor.

Education

She studied at Delhi Tamil Education Association Senior Secondary Schools in the humanities stream. After graduating from school, she made the difficult and uncommon transition from humanities to the science stream in Delhi University. She studied pre-medical at Kirori Mal College and then joined the Armed Forces Medical College, Pune, in 1963.

Career

She joined the Indian Air Force in 1968. She married Wing Commander S. N. Bandopadhyay, a fellow air force officer.She was awarded the Vishisht Seva Medal (VSM) for her conduct during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. Sati Nath and Padma were the first IAF couple to receive a President's award in the same investiture parade. 

She was the first woman to become a Fellow of the Aerospace Medical Society of India and the first Indian woman to conduct scientific research at the North Pole. She is also the first woman Armed Forces officer to have completed the Defence Service Staff College course in 1978. She was the Director General Medical Services (Air) at the Air Headquarters. In 2002, she became the first woman to be promoted to air vice marshal (two-star rank). She subsequently became the first woman air marshal of Indian Air Force. Bandopadhyay is an aviation medicine specialist and a member of the New York Academy of Sciences.