I wonder what would we be doing if none of these things were invented?

How
often do we take out the time to think about those extra ordinary minds who
made life easier for us? Here is a list of 14 Indian scientists who achieved a
global recognition-
Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (1952)
Nobel Prize for Chemistry (2009)
Venkatraman Venki Ramakrishnan was born in Chidambaram, Cuddalore (Tamil
Nadu) in 1952. He was an Indian born American and British structural biologist, who
shared the Nobel Prize in 2009 in Chemistry with Thomas A. Steitz and Ada E.
Yonath for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome. He currently works
at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England and now a US
Citizen.
List of Nobel Laureates related to India
Yea
Laureates Subject Origin
r
Foreign citizen
1902 Ronald Ross Medicine
born in India
1930 C.V. Raman Physics Citizen of India
Foreign citizen of
1968 Har Gobind Khorana Medicine
Indian origin
1979 Abdus Salam Physics Indian origin
Venkatraman Chemistr Foreign citizen of
2009
Ramakrishnan y Indian origin
1. CV Raman

Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1930 for his
pioneering work on scattering of light. Born in Tiruchirapalli on November 7,
1888, he was the first Asian and first non-White to receive any Nobel Prize in the
sciences. Raman also worked on the acoustics of musical instruments. He was the
first to investigate the harmonic nature of the sound of the Indian drums such as the
tabla and the mridangam.

He discovered that, when light traverses a transparent material, some of the

deflected light changes in wavelength. This phenomenon is now called the Raman
scattering and is the result of the Raman effect.

In October 1970, he collapsed in his laboratory. He was moved to a hospital and

the doctors gave him four hours to live. He survived and after a few days refused to
stay in the hospital as he preferred to die in the gardens of his Institute (the Raman
Research Institute in Bangalore) surrounded by his flowers. He died of natural
causes on 21 November 1970.

Before dying, Raman told his students,

Do not allow the journals of the Academy to die, for they are the sensitive
indicators of the quality of Science being done in the country and whether
science is taking root in it or not.

2. Homi J. Bhabha
Born on October 30, 1909 in Bombay, Homi Jehangir Bhabha played an
important role in the Quantum Theory.

He was the first person to become the Chairman of the Atomic Energy
Commission of India. Having started his scientific career in nuclear physics
from Great Britain, Bhabha returned to India and played a key role in
convincing the Congress Party’s senior leaders, most notably Jawaharlal
Nehru, to start the ambitious nuclear programme.

Bhabha is generally acknowledged as the father of Indian nuclear power. But

few people know that he was absolutely against India manufacturing atomic
bombs, even if the country had enough resources to do so. Instead he
suggested that the production of an atomic reactor should be used to lessen
India’s misery and poverty.

He died when Air India Flight 101 crashed near Mont Blanc on 24 January
1966. Many possible theories of the crash came up including a conspiracy
theory in which the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is involved in order to
paralyze India’s nuclear program.

3. Visvesvaraya
Born on 15 September 1860, Sir Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya was a notable
Indian engineer, scholar, statesman and the Diwan of Mysore during 1912 to
1918. He was a recipient of the Indian Republic’s highest honour, the Bharat
Ratna.

Sir M V suggested that India try to be at par with industrialized nations as he

believed that India can become developed through industries.

He has the credit of inventing ‘automatic sluice gates’ and ‘block irrigation
system’ which are still considered to be marvels in engineering. Each year, his
birthday 15 September is celebrated as Engineer’s Day in India.

Since river beds were costly, he came up with an efficient way of filtering
water through ‘Collector Wells’ in 1895 which was rarely seen anywhere in the
world. (Source)

4. Venkatraman Radhakrishnan
Venkatraman Radhakrishnan was born on May 18, 1929 in Tondaripet, a
suburb of Chennai. Venkataraman was a globally renowned space scientist
and a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

He was an internationally acclaimed Astrophysicist and also known for his

design and fabrication of ultralight aircraft and sailboats.

His observations and theoretical insights helped the community in unraveling

many mysteries surrounding pulsars, interstellar clouds, galaxy structures and
various other celestial bodies. He died at the age of 81 in Bangalore.

5. S. Chandrashekar
Born on October 19, 1910 in Lahore, British India, he was awarded the 1983
Nobel Prize for Physics for his mathematical theory of black holes.
The Chandrasekhar limit is named after him. He was nephew of CV Raman.
Chandra became a United States citizen in 1953.

His most celebrated work concerns the radiation of energy from stars,
particularly white dwarf stars, which are the dying fragments of stars. He died
on August 21, 1995, at the age of 82 in Chicago.

6. Satyendra Nath Bose

Born on January 1, 1894 in Calcutta, SN Bose was an Indian physicist
specialising in quantum mechanics. He is of course most remembered for his
role played in the class of particles ‘bosons‘, which were named after him by
Paul Dirac to commemorate his work in the field.

Bose adapted a lecture at the University of Dhaka on the theory

of radiation and the ultraviolet catastrophe into a short article called “Planck’s
Law and the Hypothesis of Light Quanta” and sent it to Albert
Einstein. Einstein agreed with him, translated Bose’s paper “Planck’s Law and
Hypothesis of Light Quanta” into German, and had it published in Zeitschrift
für Physik under Bose’s name, in 1924. This formed the basis of the Bose-
Einstein Statistics.

In 1937, Rabindranath Tagore dedicated his only book on science, Visva–

Parichay, to Satyendra Nath Bose. The Government of India awarded him
India’s second highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan in 1954.

7. Meghnad Saha
Born on October 6, 1893 in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Meghnad Saha’s best-known
work concerned the thermal ionisation of elements, and it led him to formulate
what is known as the Saha Equation. This equation is one of the basic tools
for interpretation of the spectra of stars in astrophysics. By studying the
spectra of various stars, one can find their temperature and from that, using
Saha’s equation, determine the ionisation state of the various elements
making up the star.

He also invented an instrument to measure the weight and pressure of solar

rays. But did you know, he was also the chief architect of river planning in
India? He prepared the original plan for the Damodar Valley Project.
8. Srinivasa Ramanujan
Born on December 22, 1887 in Tamil Nadu, Ramanujam was an Indian
mathematician and autodidact who, with almost no formal training in pure
mathematics, made extraordinary contributions to mathematical analysis,
number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions.

By age 11, he had exhausted the mathematical knowledge of two college

students who were lodgers at his home. He was later lent a book on advanced
trigonometry written by S. L. Loney. He completely mastered this book by the
age of 13 and discovered sophisticated theorems on his own.

We hadn’t known before that he faced a lot of health problems while living in
England due to scarcity of vegetarian food. He returned to India and died at a
young age of 32.

Ramanujan’s home state of Tamil Nadu celebrates 22 December

(Ramanujan’s birthday) as ‘State IT Day’, memorializing both the man and his
achievements.

9. Jagadish Chandra Bose

Acharya J.C. Bose was a man of many talents. Born on 30 November, 1858
in Bikrampur, West Bengal, he was a polymath, physicist, biologist, botanist
and archaeologist. He pioneered the study of radio and microwave optics,
made important contributions to the study of plants and laid the foundation of
experimental science in the Indian sub-continent. He was the first person to
use semiconductor junctions to detect radio signals, thus demonstrating
wireless communication for the first time. What’s more, he is also probably the
father of open technology, as he made his inventions and work freely
available for others to further develop. His reluctance for patenting his work is
legendary.

Another of his well known inventions is the crescograph, through which he

measured plant response to various stimuli and hypothesized that plants can
feel pain, understand affection etc.

While most of us are aware of his scientific prowess, we might not be aware of
his talent as an early writer of science fiction! He is in fact considered the
father of Bengali science fiction.
10. Vikram Sarabhai
Considered as the Father of India’s space programme, Vikram Sarabhai was
born on on 12 August, 1919 in the city of Ahmedabad in Gujarat. He was
instrumental in the setting up of the Indian Space Research Organization
(ISRO), when he successfully convinced the Indian government of the
importance of a space programme for a developing nation after the launch of
the Russian Sputnik, in this quote:

There are some who question the relevance of space

activities in a developing nation. To us, there is no
ambiguity of purpose. We do not have the fantasy of
competing with the economically advanced nations in
the exploration of the moon or the planets or manned
space-flight.
But we are convinced that if we are to play a meaningful
role nationally, and in the community of nations, we
must be second to none in the application of advanced
technologies to the real problems of man and society.
He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1966 and the Padma Vubhushan
after his death in 1972. While everyone knows of his primary role in the
establishment of ISRO, perhaps many of us do not know that he was also the
force behind the establishment of many other Indian institutes of repute, most
notably the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) and the
Nehru Foundation for Development.

11. Salim Ali

Sálim Moizuddin Abdul Ali, born on November 12, 1896 in Mumbai, was an
ornithologist and a naturalist. Salim Ali was among the first Indians to conduct
systematic bird surveys across India and his bird books helped develop
ornithology in the sub-continent.
This Birdman of India was the key figure behind the Bombay Natural History
Society after 1947 and used his personal influence to garner government
support for the organisation. He was awarded India’s second highest civilian
honour, the Padma Vibhushan in 1976.

12. Har Gobind Khorana

Born on January 9, 1922 at Raipur village in West Punjab (now in Pakistan),
Khorana was an Indian-American biochemist who shared the 1968 Nobel
Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Marshall W. Nirenberg and Robert W.
Holley for research that helped to show how the order of nucleotides in nucleic
acids, which carry the genetic code of the cell, control the cell’s synthesis of
proteins.

In 1970, Khorana became the first to synthesize an artificial gene in a living

cell. His work became the foundation for much of the later research in
biotechnology and gene therapy.

How many are aware that the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the

Government of India (DBT Department of Biotechnology), and the Indo-US
Science and Technology Forum jointly created the Khorana Program in 2007?
The mission of the Khorana Program is to build a seamless community of
scientists, industrialists, and social entrepreneurs in the United States and
India. Khorana died of natural causes on November 9, 2011 at the age of 89.

13. Birbal Sahni

Born on November 14, 1891 in West Punjab, Sahni was an Indian
paleobotanist who studied the fossils of the Indian subcontinent. He was also
a geologist who took an interest in archaeology. His greatest contributions lie
in the study of the plants of India in the present as well as the historical
context.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London (FRS) in 1936, the
highest British scientific honor, awarded for the first time to an Indian botanist.

He was a founder of The Paleobotanical Society which established the

Institute of Palaeobotany on 10 September 1946 and which initially functioned
in the Botany Department of Lucknow University. Sahni died on 10 April 1949
due to a heart attack.
14. APJ Abdul Kalam
Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam, born on October 15, 1931 is an Indian
scientist who worked as an Aerospace engineer with Defence Research and
Development Organisation (DRDO) and Indian Space Research Organisation
(ISRO).

Kalam started his career by designing a small helicopter for the Indian Army.
Kalam was also part of the INCOSPAR committee working under Vikram
Sarabhai, the renowned space scientist. In 1969, Kalam was transferred to
the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) where he was the project
director of India’s first indigenous Satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV-III) which
successfully deployed the Rohini satellite in near earth’s orbit in July 1980.

He also served as the 11th President of India from 2002 to 2007. Kalam
advocated plans to develop India into a developed nation by 2020 in his book
India 2020. He has received several prestigious awards, including the Bharat
Ratna, India’s highest civilian honour. Known for his love for children, did you
know that Kalam had set a goal of meeting 100,000 students in the 2 years
after his resignation from the role of scientific adviser in 1999? May he
continue to inspire millions.