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Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman
C. V. Raman was born at Tiruchirapalli in South India on November 7th,
1888. Raman entered Presidency College, Madras, in 1902, and in
1904 passed his B.A. examination, winning the first place and the gold
medal in physics; in 1907 he gained his M.A. degree, obtaining the
highest distinction. Raman spent 15 years as a Professor in Physics at
Calcutta University (1917­32), and 15 years as a Professor in Physics at
the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (1933­48). In 1948, Raman
became the Director of the Raman Institute of Research at Bangalore,
established and endowed by himself. On February 28, 1930,
Chandrasekhar Venkata Raman discovered the radiation effect
involving the inelastic scattering of light that would bear his name­ the
Raman effect ­ and which would win him Asia's first Nobel Prize in any
Science subject, in 1930. Raman's research interests were in optics and
acoustics ­ the two fields of investigation to which he dedicated his
entire career. The main investigations carried out by Raman were: his
experimental and theoretical studies on the diffraction of light by
acoustic waves of ultrasonic and hypersonic frequencies (published
Sir. C. V. Raman (1888­1970) 1934­1942), and those on the effects produced by X­rays on infrared
vibrations in crystals exposed to ordinary light. Raman was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society early in his career (1924), and was knighted
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in 1929. Besides, Raman was honoured with a large number of
honorary doctorates and memberships of scientific societies. C. V.
Raman passed away in 1970.
Prof. Subramanyan Chandrasekhar
Born in Lahore, India, in 1910, theoretical astrophysicist Chandrasekhar
was elected to the National Acadamy of Sciences (USA) only two years
after he became a US citizen in 1953. Chandrasekhar was noted for his
work in the field of stellar evolution, and in the early 1930s he was the first
to theorize that a collapsing massive star would become an object so
dense that not even light could escape it. Although this finding was
greeted with some skepticism at the time it was announced, it went on to
form the foundation of the theory of black holes, and eventually earned
Chandrasekhar a shared Nobel Prize in physics for 1983. Chandrashekhar
estimated the limit (Chandrashekhar limit) on the size of a highly dense
variety of star known as 'White Dwarf'. If this star's mass exceeds the limit,
it explodes to become a bright supernova. He also made significant
contributions to understanding the atmosphere of stars and the way
matter and motion are distributed among the stars in the galaxy.
Chandrashekar, who recieved the Nobel Prize in 1983, was honoured this
year when the largest x­ray telescope aboard the US Space Shuttle was
named 'Chandra Telescope'. In addition to his work on star degeneration,
Prof. S. Chandrasekhar Chandrasekhar contributed important theorems on the stability of cosmic
(1910­1995) masses in the presence of gravitation, rotation, and magnetic fields; this
work proved to be crucial for the understanding of the spiral structure of
galaxies. From the time he came to the US in 1936 until his death in 1995,
Find more ... Chandrasekhar was affiliated with the University of Chicago and its Yerkes
Observatory. Chandrasekhar passed away in 1995.
Prof. Satyendranath Bose
Satyendranath Bose was born on the first of January 1894 in Calcutta. He
studied at the University of Calcutta, then taught there in 1916, taught at
the University of Dacca (1921­45), then returned to Calcutta (1945­56). He
did important work in quantum theory, in particular on Planck.html's black
body radiation law. Bose sent his work Planck's Law and the Hypothesis of
Light Quanta (1924) to Einstein. He wrote a covering letter saying:­
Respected Sir, I have ventured to send you the accompanying article for
your perusal and opinion. You will see that I have tried to deduce the
coefficient .. in Planck's law independent of classical electrodynamics. It
was enthusiastically endorsed by Einstein who saw at once that Bose had
removed a major objection against light quanta. The paper was translated
into German by Einstein and submitted with a strong recommendation to
the Zeitschrift für Physik. Bose also published on statistical mechanics
leading to the Bose­Einstein statistics. Dirac coined the term boson for
particles obeying these statistics. Satyendranath Bose and Albert Einstein
Prof. S. Bose (1894­1974)
published a series of papers on the physics of particles with integer spins
(bosons). The duo predicted that if a collection of bosonic atoms could be
cooled to the point that each one reaches its lowest possible quantum

2. Find more ... mechanical energy, a Bose­Einstein condensate would result. In this state,
atoms would lose their individual properties and would act collectively as a
single entity. Satyendranath Bose passed away in 1974.
Srinivasa Iyengar Ramanujan
Srinivas Ramanujan was born on December 22, 1887 in his grandmother's
house in Erode, Tamil Nadu. In January 1913 Ramanujan wrote to G. H.
Hardy having seen a copy of his 1910 book Orders of Infinity. In
Ramanujan's historic first letter to Hardy, he introduced himself and his
work of about 100 theorems. In 1914, Hardy brought Ramanujan to Trinity
College, Cambridge, to begin an extraordinary collaboration between two
mathematicians. On 16 March, 1916 Ramanujan graduated from
Cambridge with a Bachelor of Science by Research (the degree was called
a Ph.D. from 1920). Ramanujan's dissertation was on Highly Composite
Numbers and consisted of seven of his papers published in England.
Ramanujan would go on to publish 26 papers in British journals. On May
2, 1918, Srinivasa Iyengar Ramanujan was elected Fellow of the Royal
Society of London. He would be the first Indian and first Asian to be
elected so. Srinivasa Ramanujan was one of India's greatest mathematical
geniuses. He made substantial contributions to the analytical theory of
numbers and worked on elliptic functions, continued fractions, and infinite
series. Ramanujan's work on partial sums and products of hypergeometric
Ramanujan (1887­1920) series led to major development in the topic. He gave his name to two
constants, the Landau­Ramanujan constant and the Nielsen­Ramanujan
constant. Ramanujan died on April 26, 1920 at the age of 33 in
Find more ... Kumbakonam, Tamil Nadu. Before he died, Ramanujan wrote down about
600 theorems on loose sheets of paper, which were discovered and
published only in 1976 as the "Lost Notebook" of Ramanujan.
Sir Jagdish Chandra Bose
Born in Mymensingh, Bengal, in November 30, 1858, Bose went to
England to study medicine at the University of London. He returned to
India with a B.A degree from Cambridge and a B.Sc from the London
University and started experiments involving refraction, diffraction and
polarisation. Sir J.C. Bose did his original scientific work in the area of
Microwaves. He produced extremely short waves and done considerable
improvement upon Hertz's detector of electric waves. He produced a
compact appratus for generating electromagnetic waves of wavelengths
25 to 5 mm and studying their quasioptical properties, such as refraction,
polarization and double refraction. Bose turned his attention from
electromagnetic waves to response phenomena in plants by the end of
the 19th century. Bose's research on response in living and non­living led
to some significant findings: in some animal tissues like muscles,
stimulation produces change in form as well as electrical excitation, while in
other tissues (nerves or retina), stimulation by light produces electric
changes only but no change of form. He showed that not only animal but
vegetable tissues under different kinds of stimuli­mechanical, application of
heat, electric shock, chemicals, drugs­ produce similar electric responses.
Sir. J. C. Bose (1858­1937) He was appointed Professor Emeritus after he retired from the Presidency
College in 1915. The Bose Institute was founded a couple of years later.
He was also elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1920. In 1937 Jagdish
Find more ... Chandra Bose passed away at Giridih in Bihar.
Meghnad Saha
Meghnad Saha was born on October 6, 1893 in Sheoratali, a village in the
District of Dacca, now in Bangladesh. In 1911, he came to Calcutta to
study in Presidency College. Meghnad became famous after his article on
solar chromosphere ion' was published in 'Astrophysical journal' in 1920.
He came to be recognised as a scientist of substance. In 1920, he went to
England to prove his theory before the global scientific community. He
went to Prof. Alexander Fowler and Prof. Walter Nurnst of Germany. Two
years later, he came back and joined the University of Calcutta as the
Khaira Professor. In 1927, Meghnad was elected as a fellow of London's
Royal Society.He invented an instrument to measure the weight and
pressure of solar rays. He produced the famous equation which he called
'equation of the reaction ­ isobar for ionization' which later became known
as Saha's "Thermo­Ionization Equation". Saha was the leading spirit in
organizing the scientific societies like the 'National Academy of Science'
(1930), 'Indian Institute of Science' (1935) and the 'Indian Association for
the Cultivation of Science' (1944). The lasting memorial to him is the 'Saha
Institute of Nuclear Physics' founded in 1943 in Calcutta. He was the chief
Meghnad Saha (1893­1956) architect of river planning in India. He prepared the original plan for
Damodar Valley Project. Saha passed away in 1956.

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