Background
Nath, Indira was born on January 14, 1938.
Nath, Indira was born on January 14, 1938.
Nath received her Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery from All India Institute of Medical Sciences (All India Institute Of Medical Sciences), New Delhi.
Her major contribution in medical science deals with mechanisms underlying immune unresponsiveness in man, reactions and nerve damage in leprosy and a search for markers for viability of the Leprosy bacillus. Professor Nath"s fields of specialisations are Immunology, Pathology, Medical biotechnology and communicable diseases. She joined All India Institute Of Medical Sciences as Doctor of Medicine (pathology) after mandatory hospital training in the United Kingdom. During the 1970s, India has the world"s largest number of leprosy patients in the world of 4.5 million.
In 1970 Nath was in the United Kingdom with a Nuffield Fellowship.
During this period she came to specialize in immunology. She worked in the area of infectious diseases, particularly leprosy, with Professor John Turk at the Royal College of Surgeons and Doctor RJW Rees at the National Institute for Medical, London.
After coming back to India, she joined Professor General Practice Talwar"s Department of Biochemistry at All India Institute Of Medical Sciences, which had just initiated immunology research in India. Later in 1980 she moved to the Department of Pathology and she founded and established Department Biotechnology (1986) at All India Institute Of Medical Sciences. She retired in 1998 but continued to work at All India Institute Of Medical Sciences as Institut National des Sciences Appliquées-SN Bose Professor.
She received Doctor of Science from Pierre and Marie Curie University, Paris in the 2002.
She was invited for the post of Dean of School of Medicine in Asian Institute of Medicine, Engineering and Technology in Malaysia and also as Director of Blue Peter Centre (Lepra Centre), Hyderabad. Her research is focused on the cellular immune responses in human leprosy. She has over 120 publications, invited reviews, opinion/comments on recent developments in international journals.
Her discovery and her pioneering work are a significant step towards the development of treatment and vaccines for leprosy.
Fellow: Indian Academy of Sciences (council service 1992-1994, since 1998, vice president 2001-2003). Member: FASc, FNASc, FTWAS, FAMS, Indian National Science Academy.