10 Indian Scientists Who Changed The World
Science is an important part of our everyday life, even more so than we notice. From our fancy gadgets to the the technologies we can’t live without, from our humble light bulb to the space explorations, it is all gift of science and technology.I wonder what would we be doing if none of these things were invented? How often do we take out the time to think about those extra ordinary minds who made life easier for us? Here is a list of 10 Indian scientists who achieved a global recognition-
1. CV Raman : Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1930 for his pioneering work on scattering of light. 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 the Raman scattering and is the result of the Raman effect.
2. Homi J. Bhabha : Born on October 30, 1909 in Bombay, Homi Jehangir Bhabha played an important role in the Quantum Theory.He was the first person to become the Chairman of the 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 notably Jawaharlal Nehru, to start the ambitious nuclear programme.
3. Visvesvaraya : Born on 15 September 1860, Sir Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya 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 that India try to be at par with 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. Each year, his birthday 15 September is celebrated as Engineer’s Day in India.
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 a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.He was an internationally acclaimed Astrophysicist and also known 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 für Physik under Bose’s name, in 1924. This formed the basis of the Bose-Einstein Statistics.
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 Saha Equation. 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, using Saha’s equation, determine the ionisation state of the various elements making up the star.He also invented an instrument to measure the weight and pressure of solar rays. But did you know, he was also the chief architect of river planning in India? He prepared the original plan for the Damodar Valley Project.
8. Srinivasa Ramanujan : Born on December 22, 1887 in Tamil Nadu, Ramanujam was an Indian mathematician and autodidact who, with almost no formal training in pure mathematics, made extraordinary contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions.By age 11, he had exhausted the mathematical knowledge of two college students who were lodgers at his home. He was later lent a book on advanced trigonometry written by S. L. Loney. He completely mastered this book by the age of 13 and discovered sophisticated theorems on his own.
9. Har Gobind Khorana : Born on January 9, 1922 at Raipur village in West Punjab (now in Pakistan), Khorana was an Indian-American biochemist who shared the 1968 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Marshall W. Nirenberg and Robert W. Holley for research that helped to show how the order of nucleotides in nucleic acids, which carry the genetic code of the cell, control the cell’s synthesis of proteins.In 1970, Khorana became the first to synthesize an artificial gene in a living cell. His work became the foundation for much of the later research in biotechnology and gene therapy.How many are aware that the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Government of India (DBT Department of Biotechnology), and the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum jointly created the Khorana Program in 2007? The mission of the Khorana Program is to build a seamless community of scientists, industrialists, and social entrepreneurs in the United States and India. Khorana died of natural causes on November 9, 2011 at the age of 89.
10. APJ Abdul Kalam : Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam, born on October 15, 1931 is an Indian scientist who worked as an Aerospace engineer with Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).Kalam started his career by designing a small helicopter for the Indian Army. Kalam was also part of the INCOSPAR committee working under Vikram Sarabhai, the renowned space scientist. In 1969, Kalam was transferred to the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) where he was the project director of India’s first indigenous Satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV-III) which successfully deployed the Rohini satellite in near earth’s orbit in July 1980.He also served as the 11th President of India from 2002 to 2007. Kalam advocated plans to develop India into a developed nation by 2020 in his book India 2020. He has received several prestigious awards, including the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian honour. Known for his love for children, did you know that Kalam had set a goal of meeting 100,000 students in the 2 years after his resignation from the role of scientific adviser in 1999? May he continue to inspire millions.
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