INDIA: Today is the birth anniversary of Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, commonly known as Sir CV Raman. On November 7, 1888, Sir CV Raman was born in Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu. When he was just 16 years old, he aced his undergraduate degree exams and secured first place in Physics at the University of Madras.
Later, he graduated with the highest honour from the same university with an MSc. For his research on light scattering and for discovering the Raman effect in 1930, Sir CV Raman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. In 1954, Sir CV Raman received the Bharat Ratna for his scientific contributions. Bharat Ratna is India’s highest civilian honour.
Since his school time, Raman has had a passion for the acoustics of stringed instruments and enjoyed Indian classical music. Due to his passion for music, he also constructed a mechanical violin.
Raman made some discoveries related to the violin’s clarity and frequency response. He went on to name the frequency response curve as the “Raman curve”.
It was at the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS) that Raman conducted the ground-breaking experiment that eventually earned him the Nobel Prize in Physics.
He discovered that when light passes through a transparent medium through one frequency, a small portion of the light gets deflected at right angles to the original direction. Some of this light also appears to be of different frequencies than the incident light.
After receiving his knighthood in 1929, Raman relocated to the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore in 1933 to take over the physics department.
He was appointed the Raman Research Institute’s director there in 1947, and in 1961 he was elected a member of the Pontifical Academy of Science. He held the director’s position until his passing on November 21, 1970.
From November 7, the Raman Research Institute (RRI) will commemorate its platinum anniversary.
Also Read: Birth Anniversary of CV Raman, Still the Only Indian Scientist with a Nobel Prize in Physics
