CHANDRASEKHARA VENKATA RAMAN

            CHANDRASEKHARA VENKATA RAMAN 

Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman 7 November 1888 – 21 November 1970 was an Indian physicist born in the former Madras Province in India presently the state of Tamil Nadu, who carried out ground-breaking work in the field of light scattering, which earned him the 1930 Nobel Prize for Physics. He discovered that when light traverses a transparent material, some of the deflected light changes wavelength. This phenomenon, subsequently known as Raman scattering, results from the Raman effect. In 1954, India honoured him with its highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna.Raman's father initially taught in a school in Thiruvanaikovil, became a lecturer in mathematics and physics in Mrs. A.V. Narasimha Rao College, Visakhapatnam (then Vishakapatnam) in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, and later joined Presidency College in Madras (now Chennai).At an early age, Raman moved to the city of Visakhapatnam and studied at St. Aloysius Anglo-Indian High School. Raman passed his matriculation examination at the age of 11 and he passed his F.A. examination (equivalent to today's Intermediate exam, PUCPDC and +2) with a scholarship at the age of 13.In 1902, Raman joined Presidency College in Madras where his father was a lecturer in mathematics and physics. In 1904 he passed his Bachelor of Arts examination of University of Madras. He stood first and won the gold medal in physics. In 1907 he gained his Master of Sciences degree with the highest distinctions from University of Madras.

In the year 1917, Raman resigned from his government service after he was appointed the first Palit Professor of Physics at the University of Calcutta. At the same time, he continued doing research at the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS), Calcutta, where he became the Honorary Secretary. Raman used to refer to this period as the golden era of his career. Many students gathered around him at the IACS and the University of Calcutta.

On 28 February 1928, Raman led experiments at the IACS with collaborators, including K. S. Krishnan, on the scattering of light, when he discovered what now is called the Raman effect. A detailed account of this period is reported in the biography by G. Venkatraman. It was instantly clear that this discovery was of huge value. It gave further proof of the quantum nature of light. Raman had a complicated professional relationship with K. S. Krishnan, who surprisingly did not share the award, but is mentioned prominently even in the Nobel lecture.

He was married on 6 May 1907 to Lokasundari Ammal (1892–1980). They had two sons, Chandrasekhar and radio-astronomer Radhakrishnan.Raman was the paternal uncle of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who later won the Nobel Prize in Physics (1983) for his discovery of the Chandrasekhar limit in 1931 and for his subsequent work on the nuclear reactions necessary for stellar evolution.In the past, several questions were raised about Raman not sharing the Prize with the Russian scientists G.S. Landsberg and L.I. Mandelstam, who had observed the same effect in the case of crystals. According to the Physics Nobel Committee The Russians did not come to an independent interpretation of their discovery as they cited Raman's article.  They observed the effect only in crystals, whereas Raman and K.S. Krishnan in solids, liquids and gases. With that, he proved the universal nature of the effect.  The uncertainties concerning the explanation of the intensity of Raman- and Infrared lines in the spectra could be explained during the last year. The Raman method has been applied with great success in different fields of molecular physics.  The Raman effect has effectively helped to check the actual problems of the symmetry – properties of molecules thus the problems concerning the nuclear-spin in the atomic physics." The Nobel Committee proposed Raman's name to the Swedish National Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, for the Nobel Prize for the year 1930.