Biography of Sir C.V. Raman
According to Hindu tradition, Raman was originally named Venkataraman after a Hindu deity, preceded by the initial of his father's first name, Chandrasekhara. In school his name was split to C. Venkata Raman, which later became C.V. Raman. With a father who was a professor of physics and mathematics and a mother who came from a family of Sanskrit scholars, Raman exhibited a precocious nature at an early age. He received a B.A. degree from Presidency College in Madras at the age of 16, placing first in his class and receiving a gold medal in physics.
While studying for his M.A. degree, he published his first research paper in Philosophical Magazine at the age of 18. It was the first research paper ever published from Presidency College.
Because of poor health, he was unable to go to England for further education. With nothing else available in India, in 1907 he passed the Financial Civil Service exam, married, and was posted to Calcutta as assistant accountant general.
Shortly after arriving in Calcutta, Raman began after-hours research at the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS). In the first 10 years, working almost alone, he published 27 research papers and led the way for the IACS to become recognized as a vibrant research institute. Much of this early work was on the theory of vibrations as it related to musical instruments. After brief postings in Rangoon and Nagpur, he returned to Calcutta, took up residence next door to the IACS, and constructed a door that led directly into the institute, giving him access at any time. He received research prizes in 1912 and 1913 while he was still a full-time civil servant. He also increased the IACS reputation with his extensive lectures in popular science, holding the audience spellbound with his booming voice, lively demonstrations, superb diction and rich humor.
At the age of 29 he resigned from his lucrative civil service job when Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee, vice-chancellor, Calcutta University, offered him the Palit Chair Professorship. He continued to lecture even though it was not required, and he used the IACS as the research arm of the university. By the time of his first visit to England in 1921, his reputation in physics was well known. Three years later he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society — only the fourth Indian so honored. That same year he toured the United States, spending four months at the California Institute of Technology through the invitation of Nobel Laureate Robert Millikan.
After discovering the Raman Effect in 1928, he was knighted by the British government in India and received the Nobel Prize in physics in 1930. Three years later, Raman left Calcutta for Bangalore, where he served as head of the Indian Institute of Science. There he continued his work on the Raman Effect and became interested in the structure of crystals, especially diamond. In 1934 he founded the Indian Academy of Science and began the publication of its Proceedings.
In 1948 he became director of the newly constructed Raman Research Institute, where he remained continually active, delivering his last lecture just two weeks before his death. His research interests changed in later years when he primarily investigated the perception of color.
Jagdish Mehra, a biographer, states, "Educated entirely in India, Raman did outstanding work at a time when the small Indian community worked almost entirely in isolation and few made science a career. In fostering Indian science, Raman emerged as one of the heroes of the Indian political and cultural renaissance, along with ... Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru." But as Raman himself once said, outstanding investigators "are claimed as nationals by one or another of many different countries. Yet in the truest sense they belong to the whole world."
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Landmark Designation and Acknowledgments
Landmark Designation
The American Chemical Society and the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science dedicated The Raman Effect an International Historic Chemical Landmark on December 15, 1998 at the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science in Jadavpur, Calcutta, India. The plaque commemorating the event reads:
At this institute, Sir C. V. Raman discovered in 1928 that when a beam of coloured light entered a liquid, a fraction of the light scattered by that liquid was of a different color. Raman showed that the nature of this scattered light was dependent on the type of sample present. Other scientists quickly understood the significance of this phenomenon as an analytical and research tool and called it the Raman Effect. This method became even more valuable with the advent of modern computers and lasers. Its current uses range from the non-destructive identification of minerals to the early detection of life-threatening diseases. For his discovery Raman was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1930.
Acknowledgments
Adapted for the internet from "The Raman Effect,” produced by the National Historic Chemical Landmarks program of the American Chemical Society in 1998.
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