SIR C.V.

RAMAN
Presented by :- Sai Prasad Mishra
Abhirup Tripathy

7 November 1888 – 21 November 1970

HIS LIFE
Born to Tamil Brahmin parents, Raman was a precocious child, completing his secondary and higher secondary education
from St Aloysius' Anglo-Indian High School at the ages of 11 and 13, respectively. He topped the bachelor's
degree examination of the University of Madras with honours in physics from Presidency College at age 16. His first
research paper, on diffraction of light, was published in 1906 while he was still a graduate student. The next year he
obtained a master's degree. He joined the Indian Finance Service in Calcutta as Assistant Accountant General at age 19.
There he became acquainted with the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS), the first research institute in
India, which allowed him to carry out independent research and where he made his major contributions
in acoustics and optics.
SCIENTIFIC CONTRIBUTIONS
◦ Raman started to investigate the scattering of light in 1919. His first phenomenal discovery of the physics of light was
the blue colour of seawater. Of several hypotheses on the colour of the sea propounded at the time, the best explanation had
been that of Lord Rayleigh's in 1910, according to which, "The much admired dark blue of the deep sea has nothing to do
with the colour of water, but is simply the blue of the sky seen by reflection". This was known as Rayleigh scattering.
Raman contradicted this theory by using simple optical equipment such as a pocket-sized spectroscope and a Nicol Prism.
Raman could view the water using Nicol prism to avoid the influence of sunlight reflected by the surface. He described how
the sea appears even more blue than usual, contradicting Rayleigh. His subsequent study of the Bay of Bengal in 1924
provided the full evidence. It is now known that the natural colour of water is mainly attributed to the selective absorption
of longer wavelengths of light in the red and orange regions of the spectrum, owing to overtones of the infrared absorbing
O-H stretching modes of water molecules.
◦ Raman's second important discovery on the scattering of light was the Raman effect. The Raman Effect is the process of
scattering of light particles by molecules of a medium. The scattering occurs due to a change in the wavelength of light as it
enters the medium. Light consists of particles called photons, whose energy is directly proportional to the frequency with
which they travel. When they strike molecules in a medium at high speeds, they bounce back and scatter in different
directions depending on the angle with which they hit the molecules. When a beam of light traverses a dust-free,
transparent sample of a chemical compound, a small fraction of the light emerges in directions other than that of the
incident beam.
SCIENTIFIC CONTRIBUTIONS
◦ One of Raman's interests was on the scientific basis of musical sounds. He was inspired by Hermann vonn's The
Sensations of Tone, the book he came across when he joined IACS. He published his findings prolifically between 1916
and 1921. He worked out the theory of transverse vibration of bowed string instruments based on superposition of
velocities. One of his earliest studies was on the wolf tone in violins and cellos. He studied the acoustics of various violin
and related instruments, including Indian stringed instruments, and water splashes. He even performed what he called
"Experiments with mechanically-played violins."
◦ Raman also studied the uniqueness of Indian drums. His analyses of the harmonic nature of the sounds
of tabla and mridangam were the first scientific studies on Indian percussions. He wrote a critical research on
vibrations of the piano string that was known as Kaufmann's theory. During his brief visit of England in 1921, he
managed to study how sound travels in the Whispering Gallery of the dome of St Paul's Cathedral in London that
produces unusual sound effects. His work on acoustics was an important prelude, both experimentally and
conceptually, to his later works on optics and quantum mechanics.
AWARDS AND ACHEIVEMENTS
• In 1912, Raman received the Curzon Research Award, while still working in the Indian Finance Service.
• In 1913, he received the Woodburn Research Medal, while still working in the Indian Finance Service.
• In 1928, he received the Matteucci Medal from the Accademia Nazionale delle Scienze in Rome.
• In 1930, he was knighted. An approval for his inclusion in the 1929 Birthday Honours was delayed, and Lord Irwin, the Viceroy of
India, conferred him a Knight Bachelor in a special ceremony at the Viceroy's House (now Rashtrapati Bhavan) in New Delhi.
• In 1930, he won the 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.
• In 1930, he received the Hughes Medal of the Royal Society.
• In 1941, he was awarded the Franklin Medal by the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.
• In 1954, he was awarded the Bharat Ratna (along with politician and former Governor-General of India C. Rajagopalachari and
philosopher Sir Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan).
• In 1957, he was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize.
THANK
YOU