Sir CV Raman

One of the most prominent Indian scientists in history, C.V. Raman was the first Indian person to win the Nobel Prize in science for his illustrious 1930 discovery, now commonly known as the “Raman Effect”. It is immensely surprising that Raman used an equipment worth merely Rs.200 to make this discovery. The Raman Effect is now examined with the help of equipment worth almost millions of rupees.

Early Life:

Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman was born at Tiruchirapalli in Tamil Nadu on 7th November 1888 to a physics teacher. Raman was a very sharp student. After doing his matriculation at 12, he was supposed to go abroad for higher studies, but after medical examination, a British surgeon suggested against it. Raman instead attended Presidency College, Madras. After completing his graduation in 1904, and M.Sc. in Physics in 1907, Raman put through various significant researches in the field of physics. He studied the diffraction of light and his thesis on the subject was published in 1906.

Raman was made the Deputy Accountant General in Calcutta in 1907, after a successful Civil Service competitive examination. Very much occupied due to the job, he still managed to spare his evenings for scientific research at the laboratory of the Indian Association for Cultivation of Sciences. On certain occasions, he even spent the entire nights. Such was his passion that in 1917, he resigned from the position to become the Professor of Physics at Calcutta University.

Contributions and Achievements:

On a sea voyage to Europe in 1921, Raman curiously noticed the blue color of the glaciers and the Mediterranean. He was passionate to discover the reason of the blue color. Once Raman returned to India, he performed many experiments regarding the scattering of light from water and transparent blocks of ice. According to the results, he established the scientific explanation for the blue color of sea-water and sky.

There is a captivating event that served as the inspiration for the discovery of the Raman Effect. Raman was busy doing some work on a December evening in 1927, when his student, K.S. Krishnan, New Delhi, gave him the news that Professor Compton has won the Nobel Prize on scattering of X-rays. This led Raman to have some thoughts. He commented that if the Compton Effect is applicable for X-rays, it must also be true for light. He carried out some experiments to establish his opinion.

Raman employed monochromatic light from a mercury arc which penetrated transparent materials and was allowed to fall on a spectrograph to record its spectrum. During this, Raman detected some new lines in the spectrum which were later called ‘Raman Lines’. After a few months, Raman put forward his discovery of ‘Raman Effect’ in a meeting of scientists at Bangalore on March 16, 1928, for which he won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930.

The ‘Raman Effect’ is considered very significant in analyzing the molecular structure of chemical compounds. After a decade of its discovery, the structure of about 2000 compounds was studied. Thanks to the invention of the laser, the ‘Raman Effect’ has proved to be a very useful tool for scientists.

Some of Raman’s other interests were the physiology of human vision, the optics of colloids and the electrical and magnetic anisotropy.

Later Life and Death:

Sir C.V. Raman became the Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1924. A year later, he set up Raman Research Institute near Bangalore, where he continued the scientific research until his death which was caused by a strong heart attack on November 21, 1970. His sincere advice to aspiring scientists was that “scientific research needed independent thinking and hard work, not equipment.”

Alexander Graham Bell

Only few people in this world leave their footprints on the sands of history, and these men of honour never die. One such grand personality is the greatest innovator of all times Mr. Alexander Graham Bell, who invented the first practical telephone. His other major inventions include: optical communications, hydrofoils, metal detector and aeronautic.

Early Years of Life

At that time, Bell had made great progress at both his Boston laboratory as well as at his family home in Canada and his work on harmonic telegraph entered a decisive stage. Bell got financial support from two wealthy patrons but he did not have the basic knowledge to continue with the experiment. He still he did not give up and kept trying.

Bell hired Thomas A. Watson, an experienced electrical designer, as his assistant. In 1875, an accident during the experiment led to the sound powered telephone, which was able to transmit voice like sounds. At last, after the patent issue made by Elisha Gray on March 10, 1876, Bell succeeded in making his telephone work.

Graham bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on March 3, 1847. He was the only child, of Professor Alexander Melville Bell, out of the three, who didn't die due to tuberculosis at a young age. He received his early education at home from his father; however he then got admitted to Royal high School, Edinburgh, which he left at the age of 15, due to poor performance.

Bell moved to London to live with his grand father and enrolled at the Western House Academy, Scotland. For further studies he joined University of Edinburgh. His first invention came at the age of 12, when he built a homemade de-husking machine to be used at his neighbor’s mill. In return, he was given a small workshop within the mill which he used to carry out further experiments.

At the age of 23, Bell’s brother’s widow and his parents shifted to Canada, to stay with a family friend. After a short stay there, they purchased a farm near Brant ford, where Bell built his own workshop in the carriage house. After setting up his workshop, Bell continued his experiments with electricity and sound based on the work of Helmholtz.

By 1874, telegraph message traffic was rapidly expanding; there was a great need to find an inexpensive way to send multiple telegraph messages on each telegraph line.

 The Bell Telephone Company was created in 1877. Bell company engineers brought about numerous improvements to the telephone making it the most successful product ever.

Bell further carried out his experiments in communication. He came up with the photophone-transmission of sound on a beam of light, which was a precursor of fiber-optics. He helped the deaf to learn new speech techniques. Altogether he received 18 patents in his name out of which he shared 12 with his collegues

Final years:

On August 2, 1922 Bell died of diabetes at Beinn Bhreagh, Nova Scotia, at age 75, leaving behind a wife and two daughters. He was buried at the Beinn Bhreagh Mountain. During his funeral every phone in North America was silenced in honor of the great inventor.

Galileo Galilie

Some names in the history of inventions can never be forgotten as they bless us with their numerous creative inventions that have now become a need of every man. Among such great personalities one name that is always remembered is that of Galileo Galilie.

Early Life:

This renowned scientist was born on February 15, 1564 in Pisa. Galileo was an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, and flautist who played a vital role in the Scientific Revolution. This great man was the first to use a refracting telescope to make imperative astronomical discoveries. His accomplishments also include improvements to the telescope and support for Copernicanism. No doubt for this reason Galileo has been called the “father of modern observational astronomy, “father of modern physics,” and “the Father of Modern Science.” In praise of Galileo Stephen hawking said “Galileo, perhaps more than any other single person, was responsible for the birth of modern science.

Contributions and Achievements: 

Galileo started his career with the motion of uniformly accelerated objects, taught in nearly all high school and introductory college physics courses, as the subject of kinematics. Further coming to Galileo’s career path and his immense learning, in 1609 Galileo learned about the invention of the telescope in Holland. From the barest description he constructed a vastly superior model with his efficient observation.

As a professor of astronomy at University of Pisa, Galileo was required to teach the conventional theory of his time that the sun and all the planets revolved around the Earth. Later at University of Padua he was exposed to a new theory, proposed by Nicolaus Copernicus, that the Earth and all the other planets revolved around the sun. Galileo’s observations with his new telescope convinced him of the truth of Copernicus’s sun-centered or heliocentric theory. Galileo’s support for the heliocentric theory got him into trouble with the Roman Catholic Church in 1615. In February 1616, although he had been cleared of any offence, the Catholic Church nevertheless condemned heliocentrism as “false and contrary to Scripture”, and Galileo was warned to abandon his support for it which he promised to do. When he later defended his views in his most famous work, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, published in 1632, he was tried by the Inquisition, found “vehemently suspect of heresy,” forced to recant, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest. In 1633 the Inquisition convicted him of heresy and forced him to recant (publicly withdraw) his support of Copernicus.

They sentenced him to life imprisonment, but because of his advanced age allowed him serve his term under house arrest at his villa in Arcetri outside of Florence. Galileo also worked in applied science and technology, inventing an improved military compass and other instruments.

Therefore his originality as a scientist lay in his method of inquiry. First he reduced problems to a simple set of terms on the basis of everyday experience and common-sense logic. Then he analyzed and resolved them according to simple mathematical descriptions. The success with which he applied this technique to the analysis of motion opened the way for modern mathematical and experimental physics. Isaac Newton used one of Galileo’s mathematical descriptions, “The Law of Inertia,” as the foundation for his “First Law of Motion.”

Later Life:

Galileo became blind at the age of 72. His blindness has often been attributed to damage done to his eyes by telescopic observations he made. The truth is he was blinded by a combination of cataracts and glaucoma. Galileo died at Arcetri in 1642, the year Isaac Newton was born leaving behind his resourceful creations.

J.J.Thomson

Sir Joseph John Thomson, more commonly known as J. J. Thomson, was an English physicist who stormed the world of nuclear physics with his 1897 discovery of the electron, as well as isotopes. He is also credited with the invention of the mass spectrometer. He received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1906 and was knighted two years later in 1908.

Early Life and Education:

Born in 1856 in Cheetham Hill near Manchester, England, J. J. Thomson was the son of a Scottish bookseller. He won a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1876. He received his BA in 1880 in mathematics and MA in 1883.

Contributions and Achievements:

J. J. Thomson was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society 1865. He was a successor to Lord Rayleigh as Cavendish Professor of Experimental Physics. His favorite student Ernst Rutherford later succeeded him in 1919. The early theoretical work of Thomson broadened the electromagnetic theories of James Clerk Maxwell’s, which revolutionized the study of gaseous conductors of electricity, as well as the nature of cathode rays.

Inspired by Wilhelm Röntgen’s 1895 discovery of X-rays, Thomson demonstrated that cathode rays were actually some speedily moving particles. After measuring their speed and specific charge, he concluded that these “corpuscles” (electrons) were about 2000 times smaller in mass as compared to the hydrogen ion, the lightest-known atomic particle. The discovery, made public during Thomson’s 1897 lecture to the Royal Institution, was labeled as the most influential breakthrough in the history of physics since Sir Isaac Newton.

Thomson also researched on the nature of positive rays in 1911, which significantly helped in the discovery of Isotopes. He proved that isotopes could be broke by deflecting positive rays in electric and magnetic fields, which was later named mass spectrometry.

J. J. Thomson was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1906. He was knighted in 1908. He published his autobiography “Recollections and Reflections” in 1936. Thomson is widely considered to be one of the greatest scientists ever, and the most influential pioneer of nuclear physics.

Later Life and Death:

J. J. Thomson was made the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge in 1918, where he remained until his death. He died on August 30, 1940. He was 83 years old. Thomson was buried close to Isaac Newton in Westminster Abbey.