Chandrashekhara Venkata Raman was born on 7
November 1888 at Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu. His father,
Chandrashekhara Iyer, was a lecturer in physics, in a local
college. His mother Parvathi was a homemaker. He passed his
matriculation when he was 12. He joined Presidency College in
Madras. He passed his Bachelors and Masters examinations in
science with high distinction. He had a deep interest in physics.
While doing his Masters, Raman wrote an article on
physics and sent it to various scientific journals of England. On
reading this article, many eminent scientists in London noted the
talent of this young Indian.
Raman wanted to compete
for the ICS examination. But
to write that examination,
one had to go to London.
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| Sir C.V. Raman |
As he was poor and could
not afford it, he took the
Indian Financial Service
examination conducted in
India. He was selected and
posted at Rangoon, Burma
(now Myanmar), which was
then a part of British India.
Later, while working
in Kolkata, he associated
himself with an Institute called Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, which was the only research institution in those days. While working there, his research work came to the notice of the Vice Chancellor of Calcutta University. The Vice Chancellor appointed him as Professor of Physics in Calcutta University. Sir Raman was in a good position in the Financial
Service. He sacrificed his profession and joined the academic
career. When he was working as a professor, he got an invitation
from England to attend a science conference.
As the ship was sailing through the Mediterranean Sea,
Raman had a doubt as to why the sea water was blue in colour.
This doubt initiated his research on light. He found out by
experiment that the sea looks blue because of the ‘Scattering
Effect of the Sunlight’. This discovery is called ‘The Raman
Effect’. A question that was puzzling many other scientists at
the time was easily solved by him. His pioneering work helped
him become a Member of Royal Society of London in 1924. He
was awarded with Knighthood by the British Empire in 1929.
This discovery also got Sir Raman the Nobel Prize for Physics
for the year 1930. He became the first Indian scientist to receive
the Nobel Prize. Raman discovered ‘The Raman Effect’ on 28
February 1928 and this day is observed as the ‘National Science
Day’ in India. In 1933, he joined the Indian Institute of Science,
Bangalore, as Director. Later he quit the post of Director and
continued to work only in the Department of Physics. The
University of Cambridge offered him a professor’s job, which
he declined stating that he is an Indian and wants to serve in
his own country. Dr Homi Bhabha and Dr Vikram Sarabhai
were his students. Sir C.V. Raman died on 21 November 1970.
3. SUBRAHMANYAN CHANDRASEKHAR
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was born on 19 October
1910 in Lahore. His father, Chandrasekhara Subrahmanya Iyer
was an officer in Indian Audits and Accounts Department.
His mother Sitalakshmi
was a woman of high
intellectual attainments.
S i r C . V . R a m a n , t h e
first Indian to get Nobel
Prize in science, was his
 |
| Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar |
paternal uncle. Till the age
of 12, Chandrasekhar was
educated at home by his
parents and private tutors.
In 1922, at the age of 12,
he attended the Hindu
High School. He joined the
Madras Presidency College
in 1925. Chandrasekhar passed his Bachelors (hons) in physics in June 1930. In July 1930, he was awarded a Government of
India scholarship for graduate studies in Cambridge, England.
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar completed his PhD at Cambridge in the summer of 1933. In October 1933, Chandrasekhar was elected to receive Prize Fellowship at Trinity
College for the period 1933–37. In 1936, while on a short visit to Harvard University, Chandrasekhar was offered a position as a
Research Associate at the University of Chicago and remained
there ever since. In September 1936, Chandrashekhar married
Lalitha Doraiswamy. She was his junior at the Presidency
College in Madras.
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar is best known for his
discovery of Chandrasekhar Limit. He showed that there is
a maximum mass which can be supported against gravity by
pressure made up of electrons and atomic nuclei. The value of
this limit is about 1.44 times a solar mass. The Chandrasekhar
Limit plays a crucial role in understanding the stellar evolution.
If the mass of a star exceeded this limit, the star would not
become a white dwarf but it would continue to collapse under
the extreme pressure of gravitational forces. The formulation of
the Chandrasekhar Limit led to the discovery of neutron stars
and black holes. Depending on the mass, there are three possible
final stages of a star—white dwarf, neutron star and black hole.
Apart from the discovery of the Chandrasekhar Limit,
major works done by Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar includes:
stellar dynamics, including the theory of Brownian motion
(1938–43); the theory of radiative transfer, including the theory
of stellar atmospheres and the quantum theory of the negative
ion of hydrogen and the theory of planetary atmospheres,
which again comprised the theory of the illumination and the
polarization of the sunlit sky (1943–50); hydrodynamic and
hydro magnetic stability, including the theory of the Rayleigh-
Bénard convection (1952–61); the equilibrium and the stability
of ellipsoidal figures of equilibrium, partly in collaboration with
Norman R. Lebovitz (1961–68); the general theory of relativity
and relativistic astrophysics (1962–71); and the mathematical
theory of black holes (1974–83).
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was awarded (jointly
with the nuclear astrophysicist W.A. Fowler) the Nobel Prize
in Physics in 1983. He died on 21 August 1995.
4. HAR GOVIND KHORANA
Har Govind Khorana was born on 9 January 1922 in a
small village called Raipur in Punjab (now in Pakistan) and
was the youngest of five siblings. His father was a patwari, an
agricultural taxation clerk in British India.
Khorana had his preliminary
schooling at home. Later he joined
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| Har Govind Khorana |
the DAV High School in Multan.
He graduated in science from
Punjab University, Lahore, in
1943 and went on to acquire his
Masters in science in 1945. He
joined the University of Liverpool
for his doctoral work and obtained
his doctorate in 1948. He did
postdoctoral work at Switzerland’s
Federal Institute of Technology,
where he met Esther Sibler who
became his wife. Later, he took up a
job at the British Columbia Research Council in Vancouver and continued his pioneering work on proteins and nucleic acids. Khorana joined the University of Wisconsin in 1960, and 10
years later, joined Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Dr Khorana received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1968 along with M.W. Nirenberg and R.W. Holley
for the interpretation of the genetic code, its function and protein
synthesis. Till his death, he was the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of
Biology and Chemistry Emeritus at MIT. The Government of
India honoured him with Padma Vibhushan in 1969.
He won numerous prestigious awards, including the
Albert Lasker award for medical research, National Medal of
Science, the Ellis Island Medal of Honour, and so on. But he
remained modest throughout his life and stayed away from
the glare of publicity.
In a note after winning the Nobel Prize, Dr Khorana wrote:
‘Although poor, my father was dedicated to educating his
children and we were practically the only literate family in the
village inhabited by about 100 people.’ Following his father’s
footsteps, Dr Khorana imparted education to thousands of
students for more than half a century. He was more interested
in the next project and experiments than cashing in on his fame.
He was born in a poor family in a small village in Punjab, and
by dint of sheer talent and tenacity rose to be one of science’s
immortals. Dr Har Govind Khorana died in a hospital in
Concord, Massachusetts, on 9 November 2011.
5. VENKATARAMAN RAMAKRISHNAN
Venkataraman Ramakrishnan was born in Chidambaram,
a small town in Cuddalore district in Tamil Nadu in 1952. His
parents C.V. Ramakrishnan and Rajalakshmi were lecturers
in biochemistry at Maharaja Sayajirao University in Baroda,
Gujarat. Venky, as he is popularly known, did his schooling
from the Convent of Jesus and
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| Venkataraman Ramakrishnan |
Mary in Baroda. He migrated
to America to do his higher
studies in physics. He then
changed his field to biology
at the University of California.
He moved to Medical
Research Council Laboratory
o f M o l e c u l a r B i o l o g y ,
Cambridge, UK. It was there
he cracked the complex
functions and structures of
ribosomes, which fetched him
Nobel Prize for Chemistry in
2009, along with Thomas
E. Steitz, USA and Ada E. Yonath, Israel. He became the fourth scientist of Indian origin to win a Nobel Prize after Sir C.V. Raman, Har Gobind Khurana and Subrahmanyan
Chandrasekhar.
Venkataraman Ramakrishnan began his career as a Post-
Doctoral Fellow with Peter Moore at Yale University, where he
worked on ribosomes. After completing this research, he applied
to nearly 50 universities in the US for a faculty position. But he
was unsuccessful. As a result of this, Venkataraman continued
to work on ribosomes from 1983 to 1995 in Brookhaven National
Laboratory. In 1995, he got an offer from the University of Utah
to work as a professor of biochemistry. He worked there for
almost four years and then moved to England where he started
working in Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular
Biology. Here, he began a detailed research on ribosomes.
In 1999, along with his fellow mates, he published a 5.5
angstrom resolution structure of 30s subunit of ribosome. In the
subsequent year, Venkataraman submitted a complete structure
of 30s subunit of ribosome and it created a sensation in the field
of structural biology.
Venkataraman earned a fellowship from the Trinity
College, Cambridge and the Royal Society. He is also an honorary
member of the US National Academy of Sciences. In 2007, he
was awarded with the Louis-Jeantet Prize for his contribution
to Medicine. In 2008, he was presented with Heatley Medal of
British Biochemistry Society. For his contribution to science, he
was conferred with India’s second highest civilian award, the
Padma Vibhushan in 2010.
