She was the first woman from the erstwhile Bombay presidency of British India to study and graduate with a two-year degree in western medicine in the United States.

[2][3] She was raised in a Marathi Chitpavan Brahmin family[4][5] [page needed] As was the practice at that time and due to pressure from her mother, she was married at the age of nine to Gopal rao Joshi, a widower almost twenty years her senior.

[8] At the age of fourteen, Anandibai gave birth to a boy, but the child lived only for a total of ten days due to lack of medical care.

In 1880 he sent a letter to Royal Wilder, a well-known American missionary, stating his wife's interest in inquiring about a suitable post in the US for herself.

Gopalrao was obsessed with the idea of Anandibai's education and wanted her to learn medicine and create her own identity in the world.

As Gopalrao's obsession with Joshi's education grew, he sent her with Mrs Carpenter, a Philadelphian missionary, to America to study medicine.

"[13] Anandibai travelled to New York from Kolkata (Calcutta) by ship, chaperoned by two female English missionary acquaintances of the Thorborns.

The inscription states that Anandi Joshi was a Hindu Brahmin girl, the first Indian woman to receive education abroad and to obtain a medical degree.

[11] Doordarshan, an Indian public service broadcaster aired a Hindi series based on her life, called "Anandi Gopal" and directed by Kamlakar Sarang.

Shrikrishna Janardan Joshi wrote a fictionalised account of her life in his Marathi novel Anandi Gopal, which was adapted into a play of the same name by Ram G.

[17] Dr. Anjali Kirtane has extensively researched the life of Dr. Anandibai Joshi and has written a Marathi book entitled "डॉ.

[24] In 2017, a Gujarati-language play titled Dr. Anandibai Joshi, directed by Manoj Shah, premiered at the National Centre for the Performing Arts.