Professor Sujatha Ramadorai, of the Tata Institute Of Fundamental Research, on pursuing what’s considered an unusual career for women:

The response of people, when they learn that I am a career mathematician has long been one of the following: “How fascinating, I have always loved mathematics and used to be quite good at it in my school years”; or “That was the subject I feared and hated most, how can someone be doing mathematics all of one’s life?” After the commercial success of John Nash’s life story, there is a third response: “Interesting, I saw the movie `A beautiful mind’, it is about a mathematician who was slightly crazy, and I loved it.” It is often difficult, at asocial level, to convey the pleasure of a life-long fascination with knowledge, and even more so when it is mathematical knowledge!