Today 7th Nov … is a great day, the
Nation should be remembering and celebrating …..
In the history of science, we often find that
the study of some natural phenomenon has been the starting-point in the
development of a new branch of knowledge.
Years ago, occurred an instance of this – in the ofrm of color of
skylight, which later was to inspire
numerous optical investigations.
In the words of its creator ~ “Even more striking, though not so
familiar to all, is the color exhibited by oceanic waters. A voyage to Europe
in the summer of 1921 gave me the first opportunity of observing the wonderful
blue opalescence of the Mediterranean Sea. It
seemed not unlikely that the phenomenon owed its origin to the scattering of
sunlight by the molecules of the water.”
That path-breaking invention which was to
honour and make him a Nobel Laureate – the invention itself came to be known
after him ~ it was the inelastic
scattering of a photon. When photons are scattered from an atom or molecule,
most photons are elastically scattered, such that the scattered photons have
the same energy (frequency and wavelength) as the incident photons.
Here is an extract of the Presentation Speech
by Professor H. Pleijel, Chairman of the Nobel Committee for Physics of the Royal Swedish
Academy of Sciences, on
December 10, 1930……. The Academy
of Sciences, has resolved
to award the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1930 to Sir ____________________for his
work on the scattering of light and for the discovery of the effect named after
him.
The diffusion of light is an optical
phenomenon, which has been known for a long time. A ray of light is not
perceptible unless it strikes the eye directly. If, however, a bundle of rays
of light traverses a medium in which extremely fine dust is present, the ray of
light will scatter to the sides and the path of the ray through the medium will
be discernible from the side. We can represent the course of events in this
way; the small particles of dust begin to oscillate owing to electric influence
from the ray of light, and they form centres from which light is disseminated
in all directions. The wavelength, or the number of oscillations per second, in
the light thus diffused is here the same as in the original ray of light. But
this effect has different degrees of strength for light with different
wavelengths. It is stronger for the short wavelengths than for the long ones,
and consequently it is stronger for the blue part of the spectrum than for the
red part. Hence if a ray of light containing all the colours of the spectrum
passes through a medium, the yellow and the red rays will pass through the
medium without appreciable scattering, whereas the blue rays will be scattered
to the sides. <http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1930/press.html>
Sure no
more clues and a brilliant google doodle today to honor our own Sir CV Raman.
Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, FRS was born on 7th Nov 1988 and lived
till 21st Nov 1970. The great
Indian physicist’s work was influential
in the growth of science in India.
He was the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1930 for the discovery
that when light traverses a transparent material, some of the deflected light
changes in wavelength. This phenomenon is now called Raman scattering and is the
result of the Raman effect.
Venkata Raman was born in Thiruvanaikkaval, Trichinopoly
[nearer Thiruvarangam – at Trichi]. His
parents were R. Chandrasekhara Iyer and Parvati Ammal. He was the second of
their five children. At an early age, Raman moved to the city of Visakhapatnam. His father
was a lecturer in mathematics and physics at Presidency
College in Madras, which Raman entered in 1902 at the
age of 13. In 1904 he passed his B.A. examination in first place and won the
gold medal in physics, and in 1907 he gained his M.A. degree with the highest
distinctions. In 1917, Raman resigned from his government service after he was
appointed the first Palit Professor of Physics at the University of Calcutta.
At the same time, he continued doing research at the Indian Association for the
Cultivation of Science (IACS), Calcutta,
where he became the Honorary Secretary. Raman used to refer to this period as
the golden era of his career.
On 28 February 1928, Raman led experiments at the IACS
with collaborators, including K. S. Krishnan, on the scattering of light, when
he discovered the Raman effect. Mr K. S. Krishan, surprisingly did not share
the award, but is mentioned prominently even in the Nobel lecture.
Raman was president of the 16th session of the Indian
Science Congress in 1929. He was conferred a knighthood, and medals and
honorary doctorates by various universities. It is stated that Raman was
confident of winning the Nobel Prize in Physics as well, but was disappointed
when the Nobel Prize went to Richardson
in 1928 and tode Broglie in 1929. He was so confident of winning the prize in
1930 that he booked tickets in July, even though the awards were to be
announced in November, and would scan each day's newspaper for announcement of
the prize, tossing it away if it did not carry the news. He did eventually win
the 1930 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his work on the scattering of light
and for the discovery of the Raman effect". He was the first Asian to
receive any Nobel Prize in the sciences. Before him Rabindranath Tagore (also
Indian) had received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. In 1941 he was
awarded the Franklin Medal. In 1954 he was awarded the Bharat Ratna.[
He also started a company called Travancore Chemical and
Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (now known as TCM Limited) which manufactured Pottasium
chlorate for the match industry. The Company subsequently established four
factories in Southern India. In 1947, he was
appointed as the first National Professor by the new government of Independent
India.
He died in 1970, in Bangalore,
at the age of 82. Sir Raman was the paternal uncle of Subrahmanyan
Chandrasekhar, who later won the Nobel Prize in Physics (1983) for his
discovery of the Chandrasekhar limit in 1931 and for his subsequent work on the
nuclear reactions necessary for stellar evolution.
India celebrates National
Science Day on 28 February of every year to commemorate the discovery of the
Raman effect in 1928.
Thanks to Google for that special doodle in
honour of Sir CV Raman. For the uninformed – Google doodles are special logos
that one finds in their home search page.
The Google logo, many a times
animated expressions – keep changing. Google puts special doodles marking
special occasions and days. Google
doodles on homepage of the search engine has made it more fun and enjoyable for
the users and nobody ever anticipated that it would become so popular.
With regards – S. Sampathkumar
7th Nov. 2013.