C.V Raman

Chandrashekhara Venkata Raman (C.V.Rama) is a physicist and nobel laureate in Physics in 1930 for his work on "Raman Effect",Scattering of light. Raman entered Presidency College, Madras, in 1902, and in 1904 gained his B.Sc., winning the first place and the gold medal in physics. In 1907 he gained his M.Sc., obtaining the highest distinctions. He joined the Indian Finance Department as an Assistant Accountant General in Calcutta.February 28, 1928, through his experiments on the scattering of light, he discovered the Raman effect.Read more

On It was instantly clear that this discovery was an important one. It gave further proof of the quantum nature of light. Raman spectroscopy came to be based on this phenomenon. Rutherford referred to it 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 get any Nobel Prize in Science. Before him Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore (also Indian) had received the Nobel Prize for Literature.In 1954 he was awarded the Bharat Ratna. 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