2016-11-07 Mon

Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman was a physicist and also the first Indian to win a Nobel Prize in Physics !

Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman was born at Trichinopoly, Madras Presidency, British India on 7th November 1888. His ground-breaking work in the field of light scattering earned him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930.

From a very young age, Raman was interested in science and grew up reading various books on mathematics and physics. He continued his childhood passion and continued to excel in the field of physics.

He discovered that when light traverses a transparent material, some of the deflected light changes in wavelength. This phenomenon of the scattering of the light and the resulting effect subsequently came to be known after C V Raman as “Raman scattering” and “Raman effect”.

He was knighted by the British in 1929 for his discovery of the “Raman Effect”, becoming Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman. In 1933 Raman became the first Indian director of the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. In 1947 he became independent India’s first National Professor. In 1948 he founded the Raman Research Institute in Bangalore, where he worked until the end of his life.

20 Paise commemorative stamp was issued by India Post to honour this legendary son of the nation. Later in 2009 an INR 10 definitive stamp was also issued.