Google doodles have been paying tribute to much of Indian legends than in previous years and today it celebrates the birthday of one of the greatest physicist known to India and to the world. He was the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1930 for the discovery 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.
Raman led experiments at the IACS with collaborators, including K. S. Krishnan, on the scattering of light, when he discovered 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. Krishan, who surprisingly did not share the award, but is mentioned prominently even in the Nobel lecture.
He was offered knighthood and many other medals through 1929 although the nobel prize came late to him and had to wait till 1930 to receive the award. He was the first Asian and first non-White to receive any Nobel Prize in the sciences. Before him Rabindranath Tagore (also Indian) had received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913.
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Sir C V Raman did not stop his work with the nobel, continued his studies and later in 1932 was involved with Suri Bhagavantam to discover the quantum photon spin.
Raman and his student, Nagendra Nath, provided the correct theoretical explanation for the acousto-optic effect (light scattering by sound waves), in a series of articles resulting in the celebrated Raman-Nath theory.Modulators, and switching systems based on this effect have enabled optical communication components based on laser systems.
He also started a company called Travancore Chemical and Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (now known as TCM Limited) which manufactured Pottasium chlorate for the match industry in 1943 along with Dr. Krishnamurthy. The Company subsequently established four factories in Southern India. In 1947, he was appointed as the first National Professor by the new government of Independent India.
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- Unknown Updated at: Thursday, November 07, 2013
