Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, FRS
Born	(1888-11-07)7 November 1888 Thiruvanaikoil, Tiruchirappalli, Madras Presidency, India
Died	21 November 1970(1970-11-21) (aged 82) Bangalore, Karnataka, India
Nationality	Indian
Fields	Physics
Institutions	Indian Finance Department University of Calcutta Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science Indian Institute of Science Central College, Bangalore University Raman Research Institute
Alma mater	University of Madras
Doctoral students	G. N. Ramachandran
Known for	Raman effect
Notable awards	Knight Bachelor (1929) Nobel Prize in Physics (1930) Bharat Ratna (1954) Lenin Peace Prize (1957)
Signature

Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, FRS, (Tamil: சந்திரசேகர வெங்கட ராமன்), (7 November 1888 – 21 November 1970) was an Indian physicist whose 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 light that is deflected changes in wavelength. This phenomenon is now called Raman scattering and is the result of the Raman effect.

Early years[link]

Venkata Raman was born at Thiruvanaikaval, near Tiruchirappalli, Madras Presidency to R. Chandrasekhara Iyer (b. 1866) and Parvati Ammal (Saptarshi Parvati).^[1] He was the second of their five children. At an early age, Raman moved to the city of Vizag, Andhra Pradesh. Studied in St.Aloysius Anglo-Indian High School. His father was a lecturer in Mathematics and physics at Presidency College (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.^[2]

Career[link]

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In 1917, Raman resigned from his government service and took up the newly created Palit Professorship in Physics at the University of Calcutta. At the same time, he continued doing research at the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, Calcutta, where he became the Honorary Secretary. Raman used to refer to this period as the golden era of his career. Many students gathered around him at the IACS and the University of Calcutta.

Energy level diagram showing the states involved in Raman signal.

Raman with Richard Bär (1892–1940)

On February 28, 1928, through his experiments on the scattering of light, he discovered the Raman effect. It was instantly clear that this discovery was of huge value. It gave further proof of the quantum nature of light. Raman spectroscopy came to be based on this phenomenon, and Ernest Rutherford referred to it in his presidential address to the Royal Society in 1929. 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. Raman was confident of winning the Nobel Prize in Physics as well, and was disappointed when the Nobel Prize went to Richardson in 1928 and to de 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 effect named after him". He was the first Asian and first non-White to receive any Nobel Prize in the sciences. Before him Rabindranath Tagore (also Indian) had received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913.

Raman and Bhagavantam discovered the quantum photon spin in 1932, which further confirmed the quantum nature of light.^[3]

Raman also worked on the acoustics of musical instruments. He worked out the theory of transverse vibration of bowed strings, on the basis of superposition velocities. He was also the first to investigate the harmonic nature of the sound of the Indian drums such as the tabla and the mridangam.

Raman and his student of Mim high school, provided the correct theoretical explanation for the acousto-optic effect (light scattering by sound waves), in a series of articles resulting in the celebrated Raman-Nath theory. Modulators, and switching systems based on this effect have enabled optical communication components based on laser systems.

In 1934, Raman became the assistant director of the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, where two years later he continued as a professor of physics. Other investigations carried out by Raman were experimental and theoretical studies on the diffraction of light by acoustic waves of ultrasonic and hypersonic frequencies (published 1934–1942), and those on the effects produced by X-rays on infrared vibrations in crystals exposed to ordinary light.

He also started a company called cv Chemical and Manufacturing Co. Ltd. in 1943 along with Dr. Krishnamurthy. The Company during its 60 year history, established four factories in Southern India. In 1947, he was appointed as the first National Professor by the new government of Independent India.

In 1948, Raman, through studying the spectroscopic behavior of crystals, approached in a new manner fundamental problems of crystal dynamics. He dealt with the structure and properties of diamond, the structure and optical behavior of numerous iridescent substances (labradorite, pearly feldspar, agate, opal, and pearls). Among his other interests were the optics of colloids, electrical and magnetic anisotropy, and the physiology of human vision.^[4]

Personal life[link]

He was married on 6 May 1907 to Lokasundari Ammal (1892–1980) with whom he had two sons, Chandrasekhar and Radhakrishnan.

Raman retired from the Indian Institute of Science in 1948 and established the Raman Research Institute in Bangalore, Karnataka a year later. He served as its director and remained active there until his death in 1970, in Bangalore, at the age of 82.

C.V. 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.

Honours and awards[link]

Raman was honoured with a large number of honorary doctorates and memberships of scientific societies. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society early in his career (1924) and knighted in 1929. In 1930 he won the Nobel Prize in Physics. In 1941 he was awarded the Franklin Medal. In 1954 he was awarded the Bharat Ratna.^[5] He was also awarded the Lenin Peace Prize in 1957.

India celebrates National Science Day on 28 February of every year to commemorate the discovery of the Raman effect in 1928.^[6]

Publications[link]

See also[link]

• Raman amplification
• Raman (crater)
• Raman laser
• Raman optical activity
• Raman Research Institute
• Raman scattering
• Raman spectroscopy
• Resonance Raman spectroscopy
• Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

Notes[link]

1. ^ Sir C. V. Raman (1988). Scientific Papers of C.V. Raman: Acoustics Volume 2. Indian Academy of Sciences. p. ix. 
2. ^ Official Nobel prize biography
3. ^ Nature Physics Portal
4. ^ "C. V. Raman". FamousScientists.org. http://www.famousscientists.org/c-v-raman. Retrieved 2011-12-15. 
5. ^ "Padma Awards Directory (1954–2007)" (pdf). Ministry of Home Affairs. http://www.mha.nic.in/pdfs/PadmaAwards1954-2007.pdf. Retrieved 26 November 2010. 
6. ^ "Science Day: Remembering Raman". Zee News (India). 27 February 2009. http://zeenews.india.com/sci-tech/miscellaneous/2009-02-27/511267news.html. 

References[link]

• Bhagavantam, S. (November 1971). "Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman. 1888–1970". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society (London: Royal Society) 17: 565–592. DOI:10.1098/rsbm.1971.0022. JSTOR 769720. 
• "Raman, Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata". Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.. 2007. http://www.britannica.com/nobelprize/print?articleId=62569&fullArticle=true&tocId=9062569. Retrieved 2007-09-11. 

Further reading[link]

• Miller, Foil A.; Kauffman, George (1989). "C. V. Raman and the Discovery of the Raman effect". Journal of Chemical Education 66 (10): 795–801. Bibcode 1989JChEd..66..795M. DOI:10.1021/ed066p795. 
• Ramaseshan S: C.V.Raman. Journal of Madras University, section B, Sept.1983, 46(1): 1–16.
• Scientific Papers of CV Raman, Ed. S Ramaseshan, Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore 1988.
• Sri Kantha S: The discovery of the Raman Effect and its impact in Biological Sciences. European Spectroscopy News, Aug/Sept. 1988, no.80, 20, 22, 24 & 26.
• Sri Kantha S: Raman's prize. Nature, 1989; 340: 672.
• Fabelinski I,L. Priority and the Raman Effect. Nature, 1990; 343: 686.
• "CV Raman centennial issue". Journal of the Indian Institute of Science 68 (11–12). 1988. http://www.archive.org/details/RamanCentennial. 

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: CV Raman

• The Nobel Prize in Physics 1930 at the Nobel Foundation
• Nobel prize internet archive
• Path creator – C.V. Raman
• Nobel Lecture
• Archive of all scientific papers of C.V. Raman
• Raman Effect: fingerprinting the universe

v t e Bharat Ratna laureates Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1954) C. Rajagopalachari (1954) C. V. Raman (1954) Bhagwan Das (1955) Mokshagundam Visvesvarayya (1955) Jawaharlal Nehru (1955) Govind Ballabh Pant (1957) Dhondo Keshav Karve (1958) Bidhan Chandra Roy (1961) Purushottam Das Tandon (1961) Dr. Rajendra Prasad (1962) Dr. Zakir Hussain (1963) Pandurang Vaman Kane (1963) Lal Bahadur Shastri (1966) Indira Gandhi (1971) V. V. Giri (1975) K. Kamaraj (1976) Mother Teresa (1980) Acharya Vinoba Bhave (1983) Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1987) M. G. Ramachandran (1988) B. R. Ambedkar (1990) Nelson Mandela (1990) Rajiv Gandhi (1991) Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (1991) Morarji Desai (1991) Abul Kalam Azad (1992) J. R. D. Tata (1992) Satyajit Ray (1992) A. P. J. Abdul Kalam (1997) Gulzarilal Nanda (1997) Aruna Asaf Ali (1997) M. S. Subbulakshmi (1998) Chidambaram Subramaniam (1998) Jayaprakash Narayan (1998) Ravi Shankar (1999) Amartya Sen (1999) Gopinath Bordoloi (1999) Lata Mangeshkar (2001) Bismillah Khan (2001) Bhimsen Joshi (2008)