5 Indian Scientists You Must Know About
Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman
Born in Thiruvanaikaval, Chennai on 7 November 1888, Raman was an Indian physicist who received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1930 for his work on the scattering of light. He discovered that when light travels through a transparent meduim, some of the deflected light changes in wavelength. This phenomenon is now called Raman scattering and is the result of Raman effect.
He was one of the most influential personality who lead a remarkable growth of science in India. He remained an inspiration for a generation of Indian scientist like Abdus Salam and Chandrashekar.
The Dream of Symmetry
Muhammad Abdus Salam
Born in Jhang, Punjab (now in Pakistan) on 29 January 1926, Salam was a theoretical physicist who shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1979 for his contribution to electroweak unification (a unified description of the two of the four fundamental interactions of nature; electromagnetism and weak interactions. This contribution is considered as a pioneering step toward the Theory of Everything. He became the first Muslim and the first Pakistani to receive a Nobel Prize and therefore was an influential in the growth of sciences in both the Muslim World and Pakistan.
The most extensively researched and comprehensive biography that I found was "Cosmic Anger" by Gordon Fraser. The author presents Salam as a staunch Muslim who was ashamed of the decline of science in the heritage of Islam, and struggled doggedly to restore it to its former glory. Undermined by the his excommunication, these valiant efforts were doomed.
The documentary "The Dream of Symmetry" is also partially narrated by Gordon Fraser.
Hargobind Khorana
Born on 9 January 1922, Khorana was a biochemist who shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1968 for the research that helped to show how the nucleotides in nucleic acids control the cell's synthesis of protein. This contributed to and made possible the development of the promising field of Genetics.
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Born on 19 October 1910 Chandrashekhar was a nephew of the Chnadrashekehar Raman and an Indian-American astrophysicist. He shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1983 for the key discoveries about the later evolutionary stages of massive stars.
The Chandrasekhar limit is named after him. The Chandra X-Ray Observatory was launched in 1999 which is one of the world's biggest of its kind. It has been described as being as revolutionary to astronomy as Galileo's first telescope.
Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
Born in 1952, "Venki'' is an Indian born British and American structural biologist who shared Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2009 for studies of the structure and function of the ribosomes.
