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| C.V. Raman |
One of the most prominent Indian scientists in history, C.V. Raman was
the first Indian person to win the Nobel Prize in science for his
illustrious 1930 discovery, now commonly known as the “Raman Effect”. It
is immensely surprising that Raman used an equipment worth merely
Rs.200 to make this discovery. The Raman Effect is now examined with the
help of equipment worth almost millions of rupees.
Early Life:
Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman was born at Tiruchirapalli in Tamil Nadu
on 7th November 1888 to a physics teacher. Raman was a very sharp
student. After doing his matriculation at 12, he was supposed to go
abroad for higher studies, but after medical examination, a British
surgeon suggested against it. Raman instead attended Presidency College,
Madras. After completing his graduation in 1904, and M.Sc. in Physics
in 1907, Raman put through various significant researches in the field
of physics. He studied the diffraction of light and his thesis on the
subject was published in 1906.
Raman was made the Deputy Accountant General in Calcutta in 1907,
after a successful Civil Service competitive examination. Very much
occupied due to the job, he still managed to spare his evenings for
scientific research at the laboratory of the Indian Association for
Cultivation of Sciences. On certain occasions, he even spent the entire
nights. Such was his passion that in 1917, he resigned from the position
to become the Professor of Physics at Calcutta University.
Contributions and Achievements:
On a sea voyage to Europe in 1921, Raman curiously noticed the blue
color of the glaciers and the Mediterranean. He was passionate to
discover the reason of the blue color. Once Raman returned to India, he
performed many experiments regarding the scattering of light from water
and transparent blocks of ice. According to the results, he established
the scientific explanation for the blue color of sea-water and sky.
There is a captivating event that served as the inspiration for the
discovery of the Raman Effect. Raman was busy doing some work on a
December evening in 1927, when his student, K.S. Krishnan (who later
became the Director of the National Physical Laboratory, New Delhi),
gave him the news that Professor Compton has won the Nobel Prize on
scattering of X-rays. This led Raman to have some thoughts. He commented
that if the Compton Effect is applicable for X-rays, it must also be
true for light. He carried out some experiments to establish his
opinion.
Raman employed monochromatic light from a mercury arc which
penetrated transparent materials and was allowed to fall on a
spectrograph to record its spectrum. During this, Raman detected some
new lines in the spectrum which were later called ‘Raman Lines’. After a
few months, Raman put forward his discovery of ‘Raman Effect’ in a
meeting of scientists at Bangalore on March 16, 1928, for which he won
the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930.
The ‘Raman Effect’ is considered very significant in analyzing the
molecular structure of chemical compounds. After a decade of its
discovery, the structure of about 2000 compounds was studied. Thanks to
the invention of the laser, the ‘Raman Effect’ has proved to be a very
useful tool for scientists.
Some of Raman’s other interests were the physiology of human vision,
the optics of colloids and the electrical and magnetic anisotropy.
Later Life and Death:
Sir C.V. Raman became the Fellow of the Royal Society of London in
1924. A year later, he set up Raman Research Institute near Bangalore,
where he continued the scientific research until his death which was
caused by a strong heart attack on November 21, 1970. His sincere advice
to aspiring scientists was that “scientific research needed independent
thinking and hard work, not equipment.”
