Madhumala Chattopadhyay

Chattopadhyay was brought up in Shibpur, a small suburb in Kolkata, West Bengal. Her father was an accounts officer with the South Eastern Railway.[3] Her mother was Pronoti Chattopadhyay.

She finished her schooling from Bhabani Balika Vidyalaya, Shibpur.[3] She did her B.Sc (Hons) in Anthropology from the University of Calcutta. She wrote a dissertation on Genetic Study among the Aborigines of the Andaman. She applied to a PhD fellowship with the Anthropological Survey of India for doing field research with the tribes of the Andamans.

On 4 January 1991, Chattopadhyay was part of a team, that made the first ever contact with the Sentinelese tribe of Andamans. She at that time was a research associate with the Anthropological Survey of India.[7] She went to the North Sentinel Island with the support of local administration's ship MV Tarmugli. She was a part of a team of 13. The key team members were S. Awaradi (Director, Tribal Welfare, A&NI administration) who was the Team Leader, Arun Mullick who was the Medical Officer (for providing medical attention in case of sickness or injury) accompanied by Chattopadhyay as an anthropologist.[1] The rest were support crew. On day 2 of this expedition, Chattopadhyay escaped from an arrow attack and the team retreated. On February 21 of the same year, the team came back to a successful contact with the tribe. The Indian government banned any more expeditions citing the possibility of the ancient tribe contacting epidemics due to frequent visits by outsiders.[4]

She spent six years researching the various primitive tribes of Andaman and Nicobar islands.[3][1] She last visited Andamans in 1999.[8]

Her book Tribes of Car Nicobar and journal papers are used as standard reference texts in universities worldwide.[3]

As of 2015, she works in the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment and lives in New Delhi.[1][8]