12 Indian Scientists Who Changed The World. And Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Them!
Science is important part of our everyday lives, even more than we notice. From our fancy gadgets to the the fan that throws air in a hot summer day. From The refrigerator that cools us off to the electricity that runs our lives, it is all gift of science and technology.
I wonder what would we be doing if none of these things were invented? How often we take out time to think about those extra ordinary minds who made life easier for us? Here is the list of 12 Indian scientists who achieved a global recognition-
1. CV Raman
Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, for his pioneering work on scattering of light, won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1930. Born in Tiruchirapalli on November 7, 1888, he was the first Asian and first non-White to receive any Nobel Prize in the sciences. Raman also worked on the acoustics of musical instruments. He was the first to investigate the harmonic nature of the sound of the Indian drums such as the tabla and the mridangam.
He discovered that, when light traverses a transparent material, some of the deflected light changes in wavelength. This phenomenon is now called Raman scattering and is the result of the Raman effect.
In October 1970, he collapsed in his laboratory. He was moved to hospital and the doctors gave him four hours to live. He survived and after a few days refused to stay in the hospital as he preferred to die in the gardens of his Institute surrounded by his flowers. He died of natural causes on 21 November 1970.
Before dying, Raman told his students,
Do not allow the journals of the Academy to die, for they are the sensitive indicators of the quality of Sccience being done in the country and whether science is taking root in it or not.
2. Homi J. Bhabha
Born on October 30, 1909 in Bombay, Homi Jehangir Bhabha played an important part in contribution to The Quantum Theory.
He was the first one to become the Chairman of Atomic Energy Commission of India. Having started his scientific career in nuclear physics from Great Britain, Bhabha returned to India and played a key role in convincing the Congress Party’s senior leaders, most notable Jawaharlal Nehru, to start the ambitious nuclear programme.
Bhabha is generally acknowledged as the father of Indian nuclear power. But few people know that he was absolutely against India manufacturing atomic bombs even if the country had enough resources to do so. Instead he suggested that the production of an atomic reactor should be used to lessen India’s misery and poverty.
He died when Air India Flight 101 crashed near Mont Blanc on 24 January 1966. Many possible theories of the crash came up including a conspiracy theory in which Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is involved in order to paralyze India’s nuclear program.
3. Visvesvaraya
Sir Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya, born on 5 September 1860, was a notable Indian engineer, scholar, statesman and the Diwan of Mysore during 1912 to 1918. He was a recipient of the Indian Republic’s highest honour, the Bharat Ratna.
Sir M V suggested India to be put under the industrialized nations as he believed that India can become developed through industries.
He has the credit of inventing ‘automatic sluice gates’ and ‘block irrigation system’ which are still considered to be marvels in engineering.
Since river beds were costly, he came up with an efficient way of filtering water through ‘Collector Wells’ in 1895 which was rarely seen anywhere in the world. (Source)
4. Venkatraman Radhakrishnan
Venkatraman Radhakrishnan was born on May 18, 1929 in Tondaripet, a suburb of Chennai. Venkataraman was a globally renowned space scientist and member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
He was an internationally acclaimed Astrophysicist and also renowned for his design and fabrication of ultralight aircraft and sailboats.
His observations and theoretical insights helped the community in unraveling many mysteries surrounding pulsars, interstellar clouds, galaxy structures and various other celestial bodies. He died at the age of 81 in Bangalore.
5. S. Chandrashekar
Born on October 19, 1910 in Lahore, British India, he was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize for Physics for his mathematical theory of black holes. The Chandrasekhar limit is named after him. He was nephew of CV Raman. Chandra became a United States citizen in 1953.
His most celebrated work concerns the radiation of energy from stars, particularly white dwarf stars, which are the dying fragments of stars. He died on August 21, 1995, at the age of 82 in Chicago.
6. Satyendra Nath Bose
Born on January 1, 1894 in Calcutta, SN Bose was an Indian physicist specialising in quantum mechanics. He is of course most remembered for his role played in the class of particles ‘bosons‘, which were named after him by Paul Dirac to commemorate his work in the field.
Bose adapted a lecture at the University of Dhaka on the theory of radiation and the ultraviolet catastrophe into a short article called “Planck’s Law and the Hypothesis of Light Quanta” and sent it to Albert Einstein. Einstein agreed with him, translated Bose’s paper “Planck’s Law and Hypothesis of Light Quanta” into German, and had it published in Zeitschrift fürPhysik
under Bose’s name, in 1924. This formed the basis of the Bose-Einstein Statistics.
In 1937, Rabindranath Tagore dedicated his only book on science, Visva–Parichay, to Satyendra Nath Bose. The Government of India awarded him India’s second highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan in 1954.
7. Meghnad Saha
Born on October 6, 1893 in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Meghnad Saha’s best-known work concerned the thermal ionisation of elements, and it led him to formulate what is known as the Sahaequation
. This equation is one of the basic tools for interpretation of the spectra of stars in astrophysics. By studying the spectra of various stars, one can find their temperature and from that, usingSaha’s equation, determine the ionisation state of the various elements making up the star.
