NEWS

National Science Day is celebrated every year on 28 February to mark the discovery of the ‘Raman Effect’ by Sir C.V. Raman on 28 February 1928

CV RAMAN

• Born on 7 November 1888 in Tiruchirapalli in modern Tamil Nadu
• Joined the Presidency College at Chennai in 1902 aged just 13 for his graduation. He passed out in 1904 with a Gold Medal in Physics
• Completed his post-graduation from the University of Madras in 1907 with distinction
• Joined the Indian Finance Department as Assistance Accountant General in Calcutta
• Continued to do research at the Indian Association for Cultivation of Sciences in Calcutta (IACS) whenever he got time
• Published papers in leading international journals such as ‘Nature’ and ‘Physics Review’
• In 1917, he was offered the Palit Chair of Physics at Calcutta University
• Continued his research at the IACS at this time. His research was on acoustics and optics. It was at IACS that Raman along with his collaborators discovered what is now called the ‘Raman Effect’.
• This discovery on the scattering of light was made on February 28, 1928. This effect proved the quantum nature of light and had huge value at that time. The Raman Spectroscopy was based on this phenomenon. Consequently, February 28 is celebrated as National Science Day in India since 1987 annually in honour of this discovery.
• For this discovery, Raman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in the year 1930. The Nobel Committee stated that the award was given “for his work on the scattering of light and for the discovery of the effect named after him”.
• He was the first Indian, Asian and non-white person to win a Nobel Prize for the sciences.
• In 1933, he became the first Indian Director of the Indian Institute of Science (IISC) in Bangalore. He was the institute’s director till 1937 and the Head of the Physics Department till 1948.
• In 1948, he founded the Raman Research Institute (RRI) in Bangalore for conducting experiments in Physics. He continued to do research at RRI till his death in 1970.
• Raman died of natural causes on 21 November 1970 aged 82 in Bangalore