By Himanshu Guru: When it comes to India, it has been witnessed in several occasions that women power has the biggest contribution to the country. This is the time to introduce Tessy Thomas – ‘The Agni Putri’ of India.

Tessy Thomas can be tagged as the maker of the intercontinental ballistic missile Agni-V, which was launched on 19 April this year.


Tessy is a project head at the Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) who leads a team of 400 top missile scientists. All of them work for the ‘Agni’ series of missiles. She is a specialist in solid system propellants and attributed with developing the technology for re-entry vehicle system.


Tessy Thomas is the Key Scientist for Agni-V in the DRDO and she is the first lady to handle a missile project in India.


In the DRDO, Tessy was associate project director for Agni-III missile project. She was given the responsibility to be the project director for Agni IV which was successfully tested in 2011.


She was appointed as the Project Director for 5,000 km range Agni-V in 2009. Agni-V was launched on 19 April 2012.


Tessy should also be credited for being the pioneering woman to head a missile project. In the male citadel of DRDO a woman’s such a huge achievement is highly commendable.


India’s Agni Putri Tessy is also a homemaker besides her professional life. But she has not left any stone unturned to balance both her professional as well as personal life. ‘Whenever work needed her she was there, whenever I needed her she was there.’ – says Tejas, son of 48 year old Tessy.


Science is science. It doesn’t have any gender – was the statement of the Agni Putri when asked about her feeling to work in a male populated atmosphere of DRDO.


“Woman making her mark in a traditionally male bastion and decisively breaking the glass ceiling” says Prime Minister Manmohan Singh about Tessy.


Tessy was born to a businessman father and a homemaker mother and hails from Alappuzha, Kerala. She did her engineering graduation from Government Engineering College, Thrissur and then completed M.Tech in Guided Missile from the Institute of Armament Technology, Pune.


Tessy’s interest with rockets and missiles began from an early age as she grew up near a rocket launching station.


Tessy was named after Mother Teresa, the late Nobel laureate who served the poor in India.

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