Trailblazing veterinarian: Celebrating the inspiring journey of Dr. Thankam Mathew

A daughter reflects on the legacy of her mother, Dr. Thankam Mathew, the oldest Indian American veterinarian, on International Women’s Day

By Dr. Taji Abraham*

Dr. Thankam Mathew (née Bastian), who is preparing to celebrate her 91st birthday on April 10, recently became the oldest Indian woman veterinarian and Indian American veterinarian. Last week, as we commemorated International Women’s Day, I, as her daughter and someone who followed in her footsteps in the profession, had a chance to reflect on her journey in the veterinary profession — a remarkable story of passion, perseverance, and pioneering achievements.

Mathew began her journey into this noble profession due to her love for animals, especially cats and dogs. During her childhood, she and her older brother, the late Prof. Francis Thekkiniyath, were either nursing an injured bird or a squirrel or a calf back to health.

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While growing up in the 1930s and 1940s, in rural Kerala, where a girl’s education was not a priority and girls were expected to be married off at an early age, Mathew was fortunate to have two educated parents, both school teachers and a principal, who encouraged and supported her passion for learning.

Though society and relatives discouraged Mathew from pursuing higher education, her parents, Mary Kattikaran and P.P. Devassy Thekkiniyath, did not discriminate against their daughter from their two sons and provided her with all the support they could give for their young daughter.

While finishing her Bachelor of Science degree in botany from the prestigious Maharaja’s College in Ernakulam, Kerala, Mathew’s call to the veterinary profession came on the day when she took her sick cat to the city’s veterinary hospital.

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After seeing the many animals suffering and the need for veterinarians and not seeing any women veterinarians around, she inquired whether women would be admitted to veterinary colleges in India. The then-director of Animal Husbandry, Kerala State, Dr. Madhava Menon, who happened to be there at that time and heard her interesting query, told her that Madras Veterinary College was admitting women students, for the first time in India.

Though she was admitted to a master’s degree program in botany in another well-known university, the Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi, in Uttar Pradesh, she took her chance and applied to the Madras Veterinary College. She was admitted and became the only woman veterinary student on campus which brought some challenging situations too.

She was not immune to the boys’ catcalls, sexist comments, and classroom pranks but was lucky to have a sympathetic faculty and invited her to the staff room where she could spend her time during short and long breaks between classes.

Mathew also had the friendship of some of her classmates and college mates who became her study partners and close friends till their end. They were Dr. Krishna Kaimal, a former dean of the Kerala Veterinary College and well-known elephant expert; Dr. Krishnan Nair, also a former dean of Kerala Veterinary College and professor of pathology; Dr. Mukundan G, a professor of animal breeding and genetics; and Dr. Neelakandan, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology.

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As the only woman student on campus, and with no hostel or on-campus living space, she remembers staying in working women’s hostels and YWCA.

“Those days were hard traveling in the bus, changing several buses” and “staying in crowded living hostels with no clean place and good food, it was not a good time but when I was in the veterinary college, I enjoyed my classes.”

Despite the challenges during her time at the Madras Veterinary College, Mathew became the first woman veterinary student to graduate with top honors and merit awards in 1958.
Mathew’s career began in 1958 when she became the first lady veterinarian to join the faculty of Kerala Veterinary College in Mannuthy in Kerala. She joined the Department of Anatomy and Histology.

During her time there, she noticed that the six to eight women veterinary students had a similar problem to hers during her student days: they did not have on-campus accommodation and instead had to live at the YWCA in Trichur, Kerala. Mathew convinced the then-dean, Dr. M.N. Menon, of the necessity for a ladies’ hostel.

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He agreed to start a ladies’ hostel on campus and secured a house in the staff quarters for these students and thus started the first ladies’ hostel of Kerala Veterinary College in 1958-1959 and Mathew became the first warden.

When she saw that the students spent time cleaning and cooking and didn’t get enough time for studying, she mentioned this to her father. With the help of her father, they employed a caring lady named Kochamma (meaning little mother) who was the cook, house cleaner, and caretaker of the first hostel.

A couple of decades later, as the number of women veterinary students started to rise, the administration decided to formally open a larger hostel and it was shifted to a building where the college was first started in 1955. Mathew worked as the hostel warden till she left the college to further her veterinary medicine studies with a Master of Veterinary Science degree at Madras Veterinary College.

After many years, when Mathew returned to the Kerala Veterinary College campus where her daughter Abraham studied from 1985 to 1991, she was pleased to see a new and larger hostel, The Priyadarshani Hostel, which had opened in 1983 to accommodate about a hundred women veterinary students. The same beloved Kochamma was still working, albeit with additional cooking and cleaning staff to assist her.

It was a full circle for Mathew: After three decades, her daughter comes back to stay at the hostel that she started in the 1950s.

After her MVSc in microbiology from Madras Veterinary College, Mathew pursued a Ph.D. in virology and immunology at the prestigious Haffkine Research Institute in Bombay, making her the first woman veterinarian in India to achieve this milestone in 1967.

Later she took up her first research job after her post-doctorate in the Stanley Hospital in Madras, followed by a stint in the early 1970s at the National Institute of Communicable Diseases in Delhi, where she worked and headed various research projects on arbovirus diseases like malaria, dengue, and chikungunya, all while raising three young daughters.
She followed her husband and highly talented veterinary researcher, Dr. Zachariah Mathew, to Kaduna, Nigeria, where he was appointed the Chief Veterinary Officer of the Federal Livestock Department (FLD).

There, she was the Principal Scientific Officer in FLD and also headed the public health laboratory. During their five years in Nigeria, the husband-wife veterinarians completed successful research projects, epidemiological studies and disease outbreaks such as a major rinderpest outbreak among the animals in the Yankari Game Reserve in the early 1980s which both Mathews helped successfully diagnose and contain further spread.

Rinderpest is commonly referred to as cattle plague, a highly contagious viral disease of cloven-hoofed animals (mainly cattle and buffalo).

Throughout her career, Mathew has been a trailblazer, breaking barriers and making significant contributions to the field of veterinary medicine. She is credited with characterizing the Buffalo pox virus as a new entity within the pox group of viruses, and due to its zoonotic importance and great possibility of virus mutation, her discovery and research work garnered interest from scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, in the late 1960s.

In addition to her groundbreaking research, Mathew has also been a pioneer in publishing, establishing Thajema Publishers in 1987, the first publishing company in India founded by a woman veterinarian. She has published and co-authored several books on virology, immunology, and epidemiology, further cementing her legacy as a leader in the field.

Following the challenges she faced in her professional life, Mathew tried to become someone who actively sought to enhance the lives of fellow women veterinarians and women farmers alike.

She started the Indian Association of Lady Veterinarians (IALV) in 1985, becoming its founding secretary. The inaugural meeting at the Kerala Veterinary College was attended by lady veterinarians from around India. She was also instrumental in getting United Nations Development Program projects supporting women farmers. She also represented IALV at the World Women’s Veterinary Association during the World Veterinary Congress in Rio, Brazil in 1991.

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She also met with Indian President Ramaswamy Venkataraman and Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi to discuss how to provide veterinary care and financial assistance to women farmers. Being one herself, she believed that women veterinarians were better able to understand the challenges that women farmers faced.

Later on, IALV established various state chapters, including those in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh. “I am very happy to see so many women joining the veterinary profession,” she said recently, reflecting on how a seed she planted almost 40 years ago has now grown into a mature tree.

Mathew became the first woman in India to open and establish a veterinary and medical diagnostic laboratory in New Delhi in 1986, which was a successful and well-respected laboratory among physicians, patients and veterinarians for a decade till she migrated to the United States.

In an era when most women were stay-at-home moms, Mathew led a very busy professional life by attending professional national and international conferences while raising three daughters. Besides Abraham, who followed in the footsteps of her parents, the other two daughters are also in the healthcare arena: Dr. Tripthi Mathew, a healthcare professional, and Dr. Trini Mathew, an infectious diseases specialist.

Even in her advanced age, Mathew enjoys using her laptop and when she runs into problems gets the help of her son-in-law, Bijou Abraham, a software engineer. Despite her many accomplishments, Mathew remains humble and dedicated to her work. In addition to her professional achievements, she has also pursued her hobbies in embroidery, cross-stitching, sewing, and gardening, showcasing her artistic talents and attention to detail.

At the age of 90, Mathew was very happy to see her 19-year-old grandson, Tanishq Mathew Abraham, receive his Ph.D. and also hear about her 18-year-old granddaughter, Tiara Abraham, being admitted to Ph.D. programs, thus continuing her legacy.

As Mom approaches her 91st birthday, her remarkable journey serves as an inspiration to veterinarians and aspiring scientists worldwide. Her contributions to veterinary medicine and her pioneering spirit have left an indelible mark on the field, and her legacy will continue to inspire future generations of veterinarians, especially women in the field.

(Dr. Taji Susan Abraham received her veterinary degree from Kerala Veterinary College in 1991. She received her Master of Preventive Veterinary Medicine from Univ. of California, Davis, California, the top vet school in the country in 1997 and it was a proud moment for Dr. Thankam Mathew to attend her graduation ceremony. With inspiration from her parents, Abraham continued her higher studies with a PhD in Comparative Pathology at UC Davis, California. She later put her career on hold to homeschool both children. She resides in California with her family and her mom.)