Great Indian Scientists

Aryabhatta Scientist

Aryabhatta Scientist

Aryabhatta Scientist (476- 550)
Aryabhatta is the first of the great astronomers of the classical age of India. He was born in Kerala, South India in 476 AD but later lived in Kusumapura, which his commentator Bhaskara I (629 AD) identifies with pataliputra (modern Patna) in Bihar.
His first name “Arya” is hardly a south Indian name while “Bhatt” (or Bhatta) is a typical north Indian name even found today specially among the trader community.

Aryabhatta studied at the University of Nalanda. One of his major works was Aryabhatiya written in 499 AD. His book aryabhatiya covers astronomical and mathematical theories in which the earth was taken to be spinning on its axis and the periods of the planets were given with respect to the sun. Aryabhatta believes that the moon and planets shine by reflected sunlight and he also believes that the orbits of the planets are ellipses. He correctly explains the causes of eclipses of the Sun and the Moon. His value for the length of the year at 365 days 6 hours 12 minutes 30 seconds is remarkably close to the true value which is about 365 days 6 hours. In this book, the day was reckoned from one sunrise to the next, whereas in his Aryabhata-siddhanta he took the day from one midnight to another. There was also difference in some astronomical parameters.

Aryabhatta was the first to explain how the Lunar Eclipse and the Solar Eclipse happened. Aryabhatta also gave close approximation for Pi. In the Aryabhatiya, he wrote-“Add 4 to 100, multiply by 8, then add 62000 and then divided by 20000. The result is approximately the circumference of a circle of diameter twenty thousand. By this rule the relation of the circumference to diameter is given.” In other words, p ~ 62832/20000= 3.1416, correct to four rounded – off decimal places. Aryabhatta was the first astronomers to make an attempt at measuring the earth’s circumference. Aryabhata accurately calculated the earth’s circumference as 24835 miles, which was only 0.2 % smaller than the actual value of 24,902 miles. This approximation remained the most accurate for over a thousand years.

Aryabhatiya was translated into Latin in the 13th century. Through this translation, European mathematician got to know methods for calculating the areas of triangles, volumes of spheres as well as square and cube root. Aryabhatta’s ideas about eclipses and the sun being the sources of moonlight may not have caused much of an impression on European astronomers as by then they had come to know of these facts through the observations of Copernicus and Galileo. Considering that Aryabhatta discovered these facts 1500 years ago, and 1000 years before Copernicus and Galileo makes him an early pioneer of this field. Aryabhatta – Siddhanta were reliable for practical purpose of fixing the Panchanga (Hindu Calendar) . He died in India.

Aryabhatta Scientist
Healthcare Field Manager
Aryabhatta Scientist (476- 550)
Aryabhatta is the first of the great astronomers of the classical age of India. He was born in Kerala, South India in 476 AD but later lived in Kusumapura, which his commentator Bhaskara I (629 AD) identifies with pataliputra (modern Patna) in Bihar.
His first name “Arya” is hardly a south Indian name while “Bhatt” (or Bhatta) is a typical north Indian name even found today specially among the trader community.

Aryabhatta studied at the University of Nalanda. One of his major works was Aryabhatiya written in 499 AD. His book aryabhatiya covers astronomical and mathematical theories in which the earth was taken to be spinning on its axis and the periods of the planets were given with respect to the sun. Aryabhatta believes that the moon and planets shine by reflected sunlight and he also believes that the orbits of the planets are ellipses. He correctly explains the causes of eclipses of the Sun and the Moon. His value for the length of the year at 365 days 6 hours 12 minutes 30 seconds is remarkably close to the true value which is about 365 days 6 hours. In this book, the day was reckoned from one sunrise to the next, whereas in his Aryabhata-siddhanta he took the day from one midnight to another. There was also difference in some astronomical parameters.

Aryabhatta was the first to explain how the Lunar Eclipse and the Solar Eclipse happened. Aryabhatta also gave close approximation for Pi. In the Aryabhatiya, he wrote-“Add 4 to 100, multiply by 8, then add 62000 and then divided by 20000. The result is approximately the circumference of a circle of diameter twenty thousand. By this rule the relation of the circumference to diameter is given.” In other words, p ~ 62832/20000= 3.1416, correct to four rounded – off decimal places. Aryabhatta was the first astronomers to make an attempt at measuring the earth’s circumference. Aryabhata accurately calculated the earth’s circumference as 24835 miles, which was only 0.2 % smaller than the actual value of 24,902 miles. This approximation remained the most accurate for over a thousand years.

Aryabhatiya was translated into Latin in the 13th century. Through this translation, European mathematician got to know methods for calculating the areas of triangles, volumes of spheres as well as square and cube root. Aryabhatta’s ideas about eclipses and the sun being the sources of moonlight may not have caused much of an impression on European astronomers as by then they had come to know of these facts through the observations of Copernicus and Galileo. Considering that Aryabhatta discovered these facts 1500 years ago, and 1000 years before Copernicus and Galileo makes him an early pioneer of this field. Aryabhatta – Siddhanta were reliable for practical purpose of fixing the Panchanga (Hindu Calendar) . He died in India.

Bhaskara I
Field Accounts Manager
Bhaskara I ( 600 - 680 )
Bhaskara was an Indian mathematician of the 7th century, who probably lived between c. 600- c.680. There is very little information about Bhaskara’s life. It is said that he was born near Saurashtra in Gujrat and died in Ashmaka, Andhra Pradesh, India.
His father in astronomy educated him. Bhaskara is considered a follower of Aryabhatta I and one of the most renowned scholars of Aryabhatta’s astronomical school.

Bhaskara wrote two treatises, the Mahabhaskariya (Great book of Bhaskara ) and the Laghubhaskariya (Small book of Bhaskara). He also wrote commentaries on the work of Aryabhatta I entitled Aryabhatiyabhasya. The Mahabhaskariyacomprises of eight chapters dealing with mathematical astronomy. The formula which Bhaskara gives is amazingly accurate and use of the formula leads to a maximum error of less than one percent. The formula is : Sine x = 16x ( ð – x ) / [ 5 ð2 – 4x ( ð – x) ]
Bhaskara II
CED Field Manager
Bhaskara II (1114 - 1185 )
Bhaskara II is a famous mathematician of ancient India. He was born in 1114 A.D. in the city of Bijapur, Karnataka state, India. Peoples also know him as Bhaskaracharya, which means “Bhaskara the Teacher”. His father name was Mahesvara. By profession he was an astrologer,
who taught him mathematics, which he later passed on to his son Loksamudra. In many ways, Bhaskaracharya represents the peak of mathematical knowledge in the 12th century. He reached an understanding of the number systems and solving equations, which was not to be achieved in Europe for several centuries.

Bhaskara II became head of the astronomical observatory at Ujjain, which was the leading mathematical centre in India at that time. It also goes to the credit of Varahamihira andBrahmagupta, the top mathematicians who worked there and built up this school of mathematical astronomy. He wrote six books and but a seventh work, which is claimed to be by him, is thought by many historian to be a late forgery. The topics of his six books are geometry, trigonometry, calculus, algebra arithmetic and astronomy. The six works are Lilavati (The Beautiful) on mathematics; Bijaganita (Root Extraction) on algebra; the siddhanta shiromani which is divided into two parts: mathematical astronomy and sphere; the Vasanabhasya of Mitaksara which is Bhaskaracharya’s views on the Siddhantashiromani; the Karanakutuhala (Calculation of Astronomical Wonders) or Brahmatulya in which he simplified the concepts of Siddhantashiromani; and the Vivarana which comments on the Shishyadhividdhidatantra of Lalla. From the mathematical point of view, the first three of these works are the most interesting.

Bhaskara II also wrote Siddhanta Shiromani at the age of 36 in 1150 A.D. This colossal work has divided into four categories Goladhyaya, Ganitadhyaya, Lilavati and Bijaganita and consists of about 1450 verses. Each and every categories of the book consigns of huge number of verses. Each of them can be considered as a separate book, Lilavati has 278 verses, Bijaganita has 213 verses, Ganitadhyaya has 451 verses, and Goladhyaya has 501 verses. He formulated simple ways of calculations from Arithmetic to Astronomy in this book. He wrote Lilavatis an excellent lucid and poetic language. It has been translated in various languages throughout the world. In English, the multiples of 1000 are termed as thousand, million, billion, trillion, quadrillion etc. These terms were named recently in English, but Bhaskaracharya gave the terms for Numbers in multiples of ten, which are as follows:

Eka (1), dasha (10), shata (100), sahastra (1000), ayuta (10000), laksha (100000), prayuta (1,000,000 = million), koti (107), arbuda (108), abja (109=billion), kharva (1010), nikharva (1011), mahapadma (1012=trillion), Shankh (1012), Jaladhi (1014), antya (1015=quadrillion), Madhya (1016) and parardha (1017).

The Siddhanta siromani too enjoyed great popularity. Bhaskara II calculated the equinoctial shadow at any place and the new corrections to be applied to the calculation of the time of sunrise. Bhaskara too accepted the precession of the equinoxes, through later astronomers allowed Bhaskara’s correct theory to be perverted. All this shows beyond doubt that Bhaskara was blessed with a remarkably active brain. Bhaskara’s works have served as reference books in every nook and corner of India. He died in 1185 in Ujjain, India.
Birbal Sahni
Birbal Sahni (1891 - 1949)
Birbal Sahni was a world famous palaeobotanist and Indian pale botanist who studied the fossils of the Indian subcontinent. He was the founder of Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany,

which is situated in Lucknow, India. He was born on 14th November 1891 at Bhera, small town in Saharanpur District, now a part of West Punjab in Pakistan.

He was the son of Ishwar Devi and Lala Ruchi Ram Sahani. His father was a chemistry teacher who was interested in the study of nature. He got his education from Punjab University, Lahore, India. Later on, in 1911 he went to England, where he entered the Emmanuel College at Cambridge. In 1913 Sahni obtained a first class in Part-I of the Natural Sciences Tripos and he completed the Part-II of the Tripos in 1915. After that he studied under Professor A.C. Seward, and got his D.Sc. Degree from Landon University in 1919. After completion of his education Birbal Sahni came back to India and worked as Professor of Botany at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi and Punjab University for about a year. In 1920 he married Savitri Suri, daughter of Sunder Das Suri who was an Inspector of Schools in Punjab. Savitri took an interest in his work and was a constant companion.

Palaeobotany is a subject which requires the knowledge of botany and geology subject. It also require for an daring guts and a physique good enough for trekking on the mountains for collection of rocks that contain plant fossils. Once the rocks have been collected and ground, the abilities of a detective are required to piece together the picture of that ancient plant from the scattered information available in the fossils. From childhood Sahni was interested in these qualities. Birbal Sahni was the first botanist to study extensively the flora of Indian Gondwana. Sahni also explored the Raj Mahal hills in Bihar, which is a treasury of fossils of ancient plants. Here he discovered some new genus of plants.

Birbal Sahni was not only botanist but also geologist. By using simple instruments and his huge knowledge of ancient plants, he estimated the age of some old rocks. He showed to the people that the age of the salt range, now in Pakistan Punjab, is 40 to 60 million years old and not about 100 million years, as believed till then. He found that the Deccan Traps in Madhya Pradesh were of the tertiary period, about 62 million years old. Besides, Sahni took a keen interest in archaeology. One of his investigations led to the discovery of coin moulds in Rohtak in 1936. For his studies on the technique of casting coins in ancient India he was awarded the Nelson Wright Medal of the Numismatic Society of India.

Being a teacher, Sahni first raised the standard of teaching at the Department of Botany. Next he established the Department of Geology. A logical sequence was the establishment of the institute of palaeobotany. It was the first of its kind in the world. Sahni died on the night of 10th April, 1949 within less than a week of the foundation stone laying ceremony of his institute. His wife completed the task he had left undone. The institute is today known as the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany.
C. R. Rao
PERSONAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
Dr. Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao is the famous scientist of India. Currently he is a Professor emeritus at Penn state University. He was born on 10th September 1920 in Hadagalli, in the state of Karnataka, South India.

He was the son of C.D. Naidu and A. Laxmikantamma. Currently he is a Professor emeritus at Penn state University.

C. R. Rao is the son of C.D. Naidu and A. Laxmikantamma. After the retirement of his father, whole family settled down in Vishakapatnam in Andhra Pradesh. From his earliest years, Rao had an interest in mathematics and decided to meke career in mathematics. He studied in schools at Gudur, Nuzvid, Nandigama and Visakhapatnam, in Andhra Pradesh. After completion of high school, he joined the Mrs. A.V.N. College at Vishakapatnam for the Intermediate course. He completed his M.A. in Mathematics from Andhra University with first rank in 1941, and M.S. degree in statistics from Calcutta University with first class in 1943. He married Bhargavi who has two master’s degrees, one from Banaras Hindu University in History and another from the University of Illinois, USA, in Psychology, and a Bachelor’s degree in Teacher’s Training. She worked as a professor of psychology at Jadavpur University, Kolkata for a number of years.

Dr. C. R. Rao started his working career with Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) at Calcutta as a research scholar in1943. He was invited to work on a project at the Museum of Anthropology and Archeology at Cambridge University, UK, which required the statistical methodology developed by P.C. Mahalanobis,the founder of ISI. Based on the work he did, he acquired his Ph.D. in 1948 from Cambridge University with R.A. Fisher, the father of modern statistics, as his thesis advisor. After a few years, in 1965, the university awarded him the prestigious Sc.D. degree based on a peer review of his research contributions to statistics. He left ISI in 1978 and joined the University of Pittsburgh. He worked there for eight year and after that he moved to the Pennsylvania State University as Eberly Professor of Statistics, where he continues to work as the Director of the Center for Multivariate Analysis (CMA).

The C.R. Rao Awarded for statistics was instituted in his honour, to be given once in two years. In 2002, he was awarded the National Medal of Science of the U.S.A. The advance Institute of Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science in the Osmania University Campus have been named after him. Times of India declared on dated 31 December 1988 that C. R. as one of the 10 top Scientist of India.
D. S. Kothari
D. S. Kothari ( Daulat Singh Kothari ) 1906 - 1993
Daulat Singh Kothari was an outstanding scientist and great educationist from India. Generally he was known as D. S. Kothari. His contribution to the whole spectrum of Indian education from elementary school to the university level is well-known.

The most important work he did was to establish the defence Science centre to do research in electronic materials, nuclear medicine and ballistic science. He was a very talented personality.

D.S. Kothari was born on July 6, 1906 at Udaipur, inRajsthan, India. His father, Shri Fateh Lal Kothari, was a school teacher. His father died in 1918 at the age of 38 years. At that time Kothari was just 12 years old. D. S. Kothari completed his secondary school in 1922 from Maharaja Shivajirao High School of Indore. After his matriculation he came back to Udaipur and entered in the Intermediate College. In his Intermediate Examination, which he passed in 1924, he stood first in the Rajputana Board. He got distinctions in physics, chemistry and Mathematics subject. For his excellent performance in Intermediate Examination, the Maharana of Mewar granted him a monthly scholarship of Rs. 50/- for pursuing higher studies. He passed his B. Sc in 1926 from the Allahabad University. He also passed M. Sc. in 1928 under guidance of great physicist Megh Nad Saha.

In 1934, He started his working career with Delhi University a s reader, professor and Head of the Physics department. He worked there from1934 to 1961. The Government of India appointed him as Scientific Advisor to the Ministry of Defence in 1948.He held the same post till 1961 and after that he was appointed as chairperson of University Grants Commission in 1961 where he worked till 1973. D S Kothari was General President of the Indian Science Congress in 1963. He was elected President of Indian National Science Academy in 1973. His notable research on Statistical Thermodynamics and Theory of White Dwarf Stars gave him international reputation. The Padma Bhushan Award was conferred on him in 1962 and the Padma Vibhushan Award in 1973. Daulat Singh kothari died on February 21, 1993. In honour of Kothari the Delhi University has established the D. S. Kothari Centre for Science, Ethics and Education.

Dr. K. Kasturirangan
Dr. Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan
Dr. Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan is a famous scientist of modern India. He is a member of several important scientific academies within India as well as abroad, currently he is an honorable member of Paliament (Rajya Sabha).
He was also the Director of ISRO Centre, where he looks after the activities related to the development of new generation spacecraft, Indian National Satellite (INSAT-2) and Indian Remote Sensing Satellites (IRS-1 A & 1 B) as well as scientific satellites.

Krishnaswami Kasturirangan was born on October 24, 1940 at Emakulam, in the state of Kerala, South India. He obtained his B. Sc. degree with Honours from Bambay University in 1961. He also got M. Sc. degrees in Physics from the same university in 1963, and after that he received Doctorate Degree in Experimental High Energy Astronomy in 1971 working at the Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad. He has won many awards with his excellent talent. It includes Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in Engineering, Shri Hari Om Ashram Dr.Vikram Sarabhai Prerit Award in Aerospace, M.P.Birla Memorial Award in Astronomy, Shri M.M.Chugani Memorial Award in Applied Science, H.K.Firodia Award in Science Technology, Rathindra Puraskar by Visvabharati, Santiniketan, Dr.M.N.Saha Birth Centenary Medal for outstanding contributions in the field of Space. He has been conferred Padma Shri, Padma Bhushan and Padma Vibhushan. He has published more than 200 papers, both in international and national journals in the areas of astronomy, space science, space applications.
Dr. Apj Abdul Kalam
BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Avul Pakir Jainulabdin Abdul Kalam served as the 11th president of India from the period 2002 to 2007. He is a man of vision, who is always full of ideas aimed at the development of the country and is often also referred to as the Missile Man of India.
People loved and respected Dr. APJ ABDUL KALAM so much during his tenure as President that was popularly called the people’s President.

Abdul Kalam was born on 15 October 1931 at Rameswaram, Dhanushkodi, in the state of Tamil Nadu, to a middle class Tamil Muslim family. He got his degree in “aeronautical engineering” from the Madras Institute of Technology in 1958. After graduation, he joined India’s Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) to work on a hovercraft project. In 1962, Dr. Abdul Kalam moved to the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), where he done more successful jobs and most important that his team launched several satellites successfully. He made a significant contribution as Project Director to develop India’s first indigenous Satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV-III). Something of Kalam’s probable views on certain can be surmised from positions espoused by him in the past. His book India 2020 strongly advocates an action plan to develop India into a knowledge superpower and into a developed view that India ought to take a more assertive stance in international relations; he apparently regards his work on India’s nuclear weapons program as a way to assert India’s place as a future superpower.

Kalam continues to take an active interest in other developments in the field of science and technology as well. He has proposed a research programmed for developing bio-implants. He is a supporter of pen source software over proprietary solutions and believes that the use of open source software on a large scale will bring more people the benefits of Information Technology. Kalam has been the subject of vicious criticism from leftists in the Indian press, praful Bidwai being among his staunchest critics. Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam regards his work on India’s nuclear weapons program as a way to assert India’s place as a future superpower. Even during his tenure as president, APJ Kalam took avid interest in the spheres of India’s science and technology. He has even put forward a project plan for establishing bio-implants. He is also an ardent advocate of open source software over proprietary solutions to churn out more profits in the field of information technology in India.

Kalam observes strict personal discipline, practicing vegetarianism, teetotalism and celibacy. Kalam is scholar of Tirukkual, in most of his speeches; he quotes at least one Kural. Kalam has written several inspirational books, most notably his autobiography Wings of fire, aimed at motivating Indian youth. Another of his books guiding Souls: Dialogues on the purpose of Life reveals his spiritual side.
Dr. Mani Bhaumik
BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Mani Bhaumik is a famous physicist from India who helped to develop the first excimer laser at the University of the Californis’s famous Northrop Corporation Research and Technology Center (NCRTC).
This is the class of laser that would eventually eliminate glasses or contact lenses in many cases requiring vision correction (the procedure takes less than a minute and is going like wildfire today). Dr. Bhaumik was elected by his peers to be a fellow of the American physical society as well as the Institute of Electrical and electronics engineers. Dr. Mani lal Bhaumik is the elder son of the famous Bhumik family. The high-profile physicist, who has been working with excimer laser ray for many years, actually hailed from Midnapore district of west Bengal and was a resident of Mahisadal at Tamluk.

Dr. Bhaumik was born on the mud floor in a poor village in Bengal to a father who was a steadfast Gandhian and a freedom fighter, Mani, suffered the hardships of dictatorial ill-treatment meted out by the British to his family. Mani describes the gruesome realities of the struggle made worse by a killer cyclone in 1943, when dogs feeding on human corpses appeared healthier than any human around. Indeed, when hell is brought earth, the dogs are more likely to survive than the people.

Dr. Mani lal Bhaumik got B. Sc degree from Scottish Church College and an M. Sc. from the University of Calcutta. He won the attention of Satyendra Nath Bose at IIT (co-creator of the Bose-Einstein Statistics) who encouraged his prodigious curiosity. Bhaumik also got Ph.D in Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur. His alma mater, IIT Kharagpur awarded him an honorary D. Sc. Degree for lifetime academic achievement.
Dr. Anil Kakodkar
BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Anil Kakodkar is a renowned scientist of India. He was the director of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre at Trombay. But currently, he is the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission of India (AEIC) and also the Secretary

Information About Anil kakodkar :
Anil Kakodkar was born on 11 November 1943 in the Barawani village, in the state of Madhya Pradesh, India. He is the son of Mr. P. Kakodkar & Mrs. Kamala Kakodkar. His father and mother were the freedom fighters. He started his primary education in Barawani and also in Khargoan. After this, Anil Kakodkar went away to Bombay for Secondary education. He graduates from the D.G. Ruparel College Mumbai. After that he obtained his Mechanical Engineering degree from Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute (VJTI) in Bambay University in 1963. He also obtained a masters degree in experimental stress analysis from the University of Nottingham in the year 1969. The life history of Anil Kakodkar’s career as nuclear scientist further saw him join the Reactor Engineering Division of the BARC.

Scientist Anil kakodkar also has the credit of being a member of the core team of architects of india’s peaceful nuclear tests which were conducted in 1974 and 1998. He also led the indigenous development of the country’s Pressurised Heavy Water Reactor Technology. Anil Kakodkar’s efforts in the rehabilitation of the two reactors at Kalpakkam and the first unit at Rawatbhatta is noteworthy as were about to close down.

In the year 1996, Anil Kakodkar became the youngest Director of the BARC after Homi Bhabha himself. From the year 2000 onwards, he has been leading the Atomic Energy Commission of India and playing secretary to the Department of Atomic Energy. Dr. Anil Kalkodkar has been playing a crucial part in demanding sovereignty for India’s nuclear tests. In fact, he is known for being a strong advocate of India’s self-reliance by employing Thorium as a fuel for nuclear energy.
Dr. Hargobind Khorana
BIOGRAPHY
Hargobind Khorana is an Indian- American molecular biologist. In 1968, He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his excellent work on the interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis.
This award made him famous in all over the world. He was the citizen of India but he became a naturalized citizen of the United State America in the year 1966, and subsequently received the National Medal of Science. Currently he is living in Cambridge, In United State as a part of the MIT Chemistry faculty.

Hargobind Khorna was born into a poor family onJanuary 9, 1922 in a small village of Raipur, Punjab (now in Pakistan). His father was the village patwari or taxation officer. He completed his secondary education from D A V High School in Multan, now in Pakistan. He obtained his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degree from Punjab University at Lahore. Then he went to England on a Government scholarship and there he obtained a PhD from the University of Liverpool in 1948. Dr. Khorana spent a year in Zurich in 1949 as a post-doctoral fellow at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and returned to India for a brief period in 1949. He returned to England in 1950 and spent two years on a fellowship at Cambridge, and began research on nucleic acids under Sir Alexander Todd and Kenner. His interest in proteins and nucleic acids took root at that time. In 1952, he went to the University of British Columbia, Vancouver on a job offer and there a group began to work in the field of biologically interesting phosphate esters and nucleic acids with the inspiration from Dr. Gordon M. Shrum and Scientific counsel from Dr. Jack Campbell. Khorana married with Esther Elizabeth Sibler in 1952 and they have three children, two daughters Julia Elizabeth, Emily Anne and one son David Roy. When he returned to his native place, he was unable to find academic work in Punjab’s crony-filled colleges. Khorana instead sought a career in Canada and finally the united state.

Dr. Khorana who showed how the genetic code determines all life processes by directing the synthesis of all cell protiens finally unraveled the secret of the DNA code of life. Dr. Khorana won many awards and honors like the Novel Prize for his achievement. Distinguished Service Award, Watumull Foundation, Honolulu, Hawali, American academy of achievement awards, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Padma Vibhushan, Predential Award, J C Bose Medal and Willard Gibbs medal of the chicago section of American Chemical Society. He was also elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences, Washington, as well as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1971, he became a foreign member of USSR Academy of Sciences and in 1974, an Honorary Fellow of the Indian Chemical Society.

Khorana’s work, which is an most important scientific landmark of the twentieth century, has brought closer the day when synthetic DNA may be introduced into the defective human tissues to bring about their repair or treat mentally retarded people and change them into more intelligent and healthy human beings. His synthesis of RNA, capable of replication in laboratory, is a step towards the creation of life artificially. In fact, the research has opened up a new branch called Genetic Engineering in Science.
Dr. Sam Pitroda
BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Sam Pitroda is better known as “The father of India’s communication revolution”. Presently he is the Chairman of India’s National knowledge Commission, besides being
the chairman and CEO of World- Tel Limited and the founder and CEO of C-SAM, Inc, he also worked as an advisor to the United Nations in 1992. He is an inventor, entrepreneur and policymaker. Sam Pitroda was born on 16 November, 1942 in Titlagarh, Orissa. His real name is Satyanarayan Gangaram Pitroda. His parents had migrated to Orissa from Gujarat. They were deeply influenced by Mahatma Gandhi and his philosophy. Sam Pitroda did his schooling at Anand Vallabh Vidyalaya in Gujarat, and completed his Master degree in physics and Electronic from Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Gujarat. In the year1964, Sam Pitroda went to the US and did his Masters in Electrical Engineering in Chicago.

Sam Pitroda has many technology patents to his name. He was involved in research work on telecommunications and handheld computing. He introduced microprocessor in telephone switches leading to digital switching and invented the Electronic Diary in 1975. He designed his own computer-themed card game called Compucards in 1983. He returned to India in 1984 on the suggestion of the then Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi and founded the Center for Development of Telematics (C-DOT). In 1987, he became advisor to the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and was responsible for revolutionizing India’s foreign and domestic telecommunications policies. He is widely known as the brain behind the introduction of the public Call Offices (PCO) across the length and breath of the country. He left the country once again after an argument with K.P. Unnikrishnan, the minister for telecommunication in the V.P. Singh government. He has served as an advisor to the UN. In 2004, Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh recruited him to head the National Knowledge Commission.

When we think about yellow phone booths all across India, we must remember to Sam Pitroda. For this facility to public, totally credit goes to Sam Pitroda. It is interesting to know that Sam Pitroda first used a telephone only after moving to the US. The biggest virtue of Sam Pitroda is that he has a definite vision to use technology for the benefit and betterment of society. Along with being a pioneer in telecom, Sam Pitroda has been made strong case for food, clean water, and adequate shelter for the unprivileged section. Due to his hard work, Sam Pitroda has brought telephones to some of the worlds previously isolated regions. In the field of telecom, Sam’s emphasis was on accessibility rather than density. By providing public access to telephones, Mr. Sam Pitroda revolutionized the state of telecommunications in India. Sam Pitroda has also featured in several newspapers, magazines radio, and TV programs.

In July 2009, the Government of India invited Mr. Sam Pitroda to head an expert committee on ICT in Railways. In October 2009, Sam Pitroda was appointed as Advisor to Prime minister of India (Dr. Manmohan Singh) on Public Information Infrastructure and Innovations with the rank of Cabinet Minister. He has been awarded the Padma Bhushan award in 2009 by the Government of India for his contribution to Science and Engineering.
Harish Chandra
Harish Chandra (1923-1983)
Dr. Harish Chandra was one of the outstanding mathematicians of his generation, an algebraist and analyst, and one of those responsible for Transforming
Infinite dimensional group re-presentation theory from a modest topic on the periphery of mathematics and physics into a major field central to contemporary mathematics.

Harish Chandra was a renowned physicist and mathematician of India. He was born on October 11, 1923 in Kanpur in North India. His father Chandra Kishor was a civil engineer. Harish Chandra spent his childhood at his maternal grandfather’s home in Kanpur. At an early age, he received his education from a tutor. A tutor was hired, and there were visits from a dancing master and a music master. At the age of nine, he was younger than his schoolmates were, in the seventh class. He completed Christ Church High School at fourteen, and remained in Kanpur for intermediate college, which he finished at sixteen, and then matriculated at the University of Allahabad, where he obtained the B.Sc. in 1941 and the M.Sc. in 1943 at the age of twenty. High-strung and frequently ill, Harish- Chandra was especially vulnerable at the time of examinations, all of which he seemed to take while suffering from some malady, serious or comic, from paratyphoid to measles. This did not prevent him from performing brilliantly. For the M.Sc., when the Physicist C. V. Raman, F R S, examined him he was the first in the state of Uttar Pradesh, receiving 100 % on the written test.

He had learned some mathematics, as far as the calculus, and some science from his father’s textbooks but his introduction to modern science came at the University. He describe many years later how Dirac’s Principles of quantum mechanics, which he had discovered in the University library in 1940, evoked in him the desire to devote his life to theoretical physics. Two years later K.S. Krishnan, F.R.S., an excellent physicist and widely cultivated man, was appointed Professor of Physics in Allahabad. He encouraged Harish Chandra in every possible way, lending him books like Hermann Weyl’s Raum-Zeit-Materie and recommending him as a research student in physics to H.J. Bhabha, at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. The good-natured, gentle Krishnan inspired in Harish-Chandra not only respect but also an affection that never abated. For the boisterous, egoistical Raman and his achievements, he had also, in spite of the difference in their temperaments, a high regard, but his own ascetic nature did not allow him to perceive the virtues accompanying the high living Bhabha’s extravagance.

The south Indian environment would have been foreign to Harish Chandra, but he spent the first six months lodging with old friends from Allahabad, Mrs. H. Kale, who had been his French teacher at the University, and her husband Dr. G.T. Kale, a botanist who had moved to Bangalore to take up duties as librarian at the institute. The eager, serious student was an inviting target for the pranks of their young daughter, Lalitha, but the interruption could not have been entirely unwelcome, for many years later when he returned to India on a visit, she, now strikingly beautiful young women, became his wife. He married Lalitha Kale and had two daughters. Gandhiji’s Quit India movement had been broken in 1942, and from then until the end of the war the independence movement was dormant. So Harish-Chandra’s time in Bangalore was untroubled by politics. Indeed, although his parents had been supporters of Gandhiji, his father adopting the wearing of Khadi, Harish was never more than superficially touched by politics. He had strong views, which he would sometimes vehemently defend, but he was not distracted by them, and was impatient with the hypocrisy and sentimentality, perhaps simply with the welter of emotions, that politic by their very nature entail.

K. S. Krishnan was Harish Chandra’s teacher at Allahabad University; he recommended his name to Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac for research work at Cambridge for his PhD degree. Based on this work and perhaps recommendations from Bhabha as well, Harish Chandra had been accepted by Dirac as a research student. Not long after the war in Europe had ended, He set sail for England, and was on boardship when atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima on August6, 1945. In 1945, Harish Chandra studies for his doctorate degree at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, under Paul Dirac’s supervision. However, he was not quite satisfied with Dirac’s lectures when he realized that Dirac was actually reading from his books. During his days in Cambridge, he started to loose interest in Physics, took more interest in mathematics, and attended the lecture courses of Littlewood and Hall. While attending a lecture by Pauli, he pointed out error in Pauli’s work. Later pauli and Harish Chandra became very close friends. In 1947, he received his doctorate degree for his thesis Infinite irreducible representations of the Lorentz group. In the thesis, he gave a complete classification of the irreducible unitary representations of SL.

Harish Chandra’s career as a physicist was to be brief- two years in Bangalore with Bhabha and two years in Cambridge with P.A.M. Dirac, F.R.S. He himself does not appear to have attached much important to the work done then, but it is of biographical interest and does occupy considerable space in his ‘collected works’. In Bangalore, there were two themes, both reflecting concerns of Bhabha and indirectly Dirac. The first, on which he wrote some papers alone and some with bhabha was classical point particles, their equations of motion, and the fields associated with them. Its origins lie in a 1938 paper by Dirac in which he derived equations of motion for a classical charged point- particle moving in an external field by examining the combined effects of the external field and the field of the particle itself on a small tube surrounding the world line of the paticle. He lets the diameter of the tube go to zero, keeping only the finite part of the energy and momentum communicated to the tube, and obtains equations agreeing with those of the Lorentz theory. Similar ideas can be applied to other point- particles and the associated fields, and Bhabha and Haris-Chandra developed them extensively, especially for neutrons and their classical meson fields. This work found no echo in the literature.

The second theme, relativistic wave equations, especially for particles of higher spin, touches issues that, although somewhat peripheral, remained of concern to mathematical physicists and are still not completely resolved. It deals with problems that in the 1940s were largely algebraic and some of the papers like those on the Dirac matrices and those on the Duffin Kemmer matrices, are purely so. The innate algebraic facility displayed in them, and in the early Princeton papers, was transformed by experience and effort into the powerful technical skill of the papers on representation theory. As it gained in strength, it lost in ease but never in resourcefulness. In Cambridge, his personal contacts with Dirac were infrequent. He attended his lectures at first but dropped out when he discovered that they were almost the same as the book. However, he did attend the weekly colloquium run by Dirac. He found that he was very gentle and kind and yet rather aloof and distant’ and felt that I should not bother him too much and went to see him about once each term.

Harish Chandra accompanied Dirac to Princeton from 1947 to 1948 and worked as this assistant. During his stay at United states, the leading mathematicians Hermann wey1, Emil Artin and Claude Chevalley who were working there had great impact on him. He remained at Princeton for another year even after Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac came back to Cambridge. At Harvard from 1949-50, he was influenced by Oscar Zariski. Harish Chandra was a faculty at the Columbia university from 1950-63, this duration is considered to be the most dynamic period of his career where he worked on representations of semisimple Lie groups. During this period, he worked in many institutions. From 1955-56 he was at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, from 1957-58 as a Guggenheim Fellow in Paris.

Harish Chandra formulated a fundamental theory of representations of Lie groups and Lie algebras. He even extended the concept of a characteristic representation of finite -dimensional of semi simple Lie groups to infinite-dimensional representations of a case and formulated a Weyl’s character formula analogue. Some of his other contributions are the specific determination of the Plancherel measure for semisimple groups, the evaluation of the representations of dicrete series, based on the results of Eisenstein series and in the concept of auto orphic forms, his “philosophy of cusp forms” , including the real lie groups, but also working at the Institute of Advanced Study at Neumann Professor in 1968. Harish Chandra received many eminent awards as AMS Cole Prize in Algebra (1954), Speaker at International Congress (1954), AMS Colloquium Lecturer (1969), Fellow of the Royal Society (1973), Ramanujan Medal from Indian National Science Academy. (1974) Honorary degrees by Delhi University 1973 and Yale University (1981), and Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences (United State) 1981. He was participating in a conference in Princeton when he died on Sunday October 16, 1983 due to heart attack.
Homi J. Bhabha
Homi J. Bhabha (1909 - 1966 )
Homi J. Bhabha was the eminent scientist who played a key role in the development of the Indian atomic energy program. He is aslo considered as the father of India's nuclear program.
He was born on October 30, 1909 in a Parsi family of Mumbai. He was the son of Jehangir Hormaji Bhabha and Meherbai Framji Panday. His father was a Oxford- educated barrister.

Bhabha received his early education at Bombay’s Cathedral Grammer School and Royal institute of Science. After that he went to the Cambridge, England for further education. he entered in the Caius College for Mechanical engineering. Before India’s independence, Dr Bhabha and Nobel Laureate Sir C V Raman established the Cosmic Ray Research unit at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore in 1939. In 1945, he established the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research at Mumbai with the help of J R D Tata. Bhabha received the blessing of Pandit Nehru for effort in India, towards peaceful development of atomic energy. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on March 20 1941.

He also established the Atomic Energy Commission of India in 1948. He represented India in International Atomic Energy Forums, and as President of the United Nations Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, in Geneva in 1955. He died in a plane crash near Mont Blanc on January 24, 1966. After the death of bhabha, the Atomic establishment was renamed as the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre.
Jagdish Chandra Bose
Jagdish Chandra Bose (1858 - 1937)
Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose, generally known as J.C. Bose, occupies a unique position in the history of modern Indian science. He is regarded as India’s first modern scientist.
Jagdish Chandra Bose was an Indian physicist who pioneered the investigation of radio and microwave optics. Bose was born on November 30, 1858 in Munshiganj District in Bengal (Now situated in Bangladesh). His father Bhagwan Chandra Bose served the British India Government in various executive and magistrate of Faridpur and it is here Bose’s early childhood was mainly spent.

His family originally hailed from the village Rarikhal, Bikrampur, in the current day Dhaka, Capital of Bangladesh. He started his education in a vernacular school. Then he joined the St. Xavier’s School and college at Calcutta (Kalkata). He passed the Entrance examination (equivalent to school graduation) of Calcutta University in 1875. He received a B.Sc. from Calcutta University in 1879. In January 1882, Bose left London for Cambridge where he took admission in Christ’s College to study natural sciences. His decision to join the Christ’s College was influenced by the fact that his brother -in-law, Ananda Mohan Bose had earlier studied there. Ananda Mohan, who took the Mathematics Tripos in 1874, was Cambridge’s first Indian wrangler in 1884 Bose obtained a Bechelor of Arts with a second class in natural sciences tripos and in the same year he also obtained a Bechelor of Science from the University of London.After completing his education he came back to Kolkatta and was appointed professor of physical science at Presidency College, Calcutta and holds this post till 1915. In 1917 he founded Bose Research Institute and became director of the same institute at Calcutta and remained in the post until his death on November 23, 1937. Jagadish Chandra Bose was one of the pioneers of modern science in India. His research was on the properties of electro-magnetic waves.
Kariamanikkam Srinivasa Krishnan
Kariamanikkam Srinivasa Krishnan (KSK) 1898-1961
Kariamanikkam Srinivasa Krishnan, generally known as K. S. Krishnan and KSK. Mostly he is known as co-discoverer of the famous Raman Effect, a discovery which brought the first and till date the only Nobel Prize in Science to India.

The Prize was awarded to Krishnan’s mentor and research guide C.V. Raman in 1930. The citation for the Nobel Prize also stated that the Prize was given to Raman for his work on the scattering of light and the discovery of the effect named after him. In reality, there is no controversy. Raman deserved the Prize. KSK was an outstanding physicist of international repute. He made pioneering contributions in a number of fields of physics. He had the ability to recognize and exploit connection between phenomena in different fields of physics.

Sir K.S. Krishnan won his scientific spurs by opening peepholes into the interiors of molecules. One such peephole was provided by his collaboration in the discovery of the Raman Effect (C. V. Raman was his mentor and guide at the time) another was the invention of an ingenious experimental technique to establish correlations between the magnetic properties of crystals and their internal architecture. A third was the mapping of the energy distribution of electrons in graphite crystals.

KSK played an important role in the field of development of science and technology in India. He was deeply associated with the premier scientific educational organizations in the country like the Atomic Energy Commission, the Council of Scientific and industrial Research and the University Grants Commission. He was a great teacher, a real guru in the tradition of great ancient sages. Besides being a ‘complete physicist’, he was ‘a whole man with an integrated personality’. He was a staunch nationalist. He forcefully championed the cause of science writing in mother tongue. He himself ably performed the task in Tamil. He was a distinguished writer in Tamil. KSK strongly believed that one could convey even very complicated scientific facts in his mother tongue. His scholarship and appreciation of Tamil literature must have given the gift to perform this task with ease. In one of his articles, he speaks of his school science teacher Thirumalai Kozhunthu Pillai, who encouraged the students by teaching science in an him, he got the conviction that difficult scientific concepts could be conveyed in Tamil. He was a sports enthusiast and played tennis, bridge and football. He had mastery over Sanskrit and Tamil literature. KSK since his childhood developed an abiding love of religion and Indian philosophies. Many people have noted that it was a pleasure to listen him. He could always find an appropriate anecdote to drive home a moral or disarm a critic or just entertain.

KSK was born on December 4, 1898, in the village of Wartrap, District of Tamilnadu. His father was a school teacher. After schooling in his village school and at the Hindu High School at the neighbouring town Srivilliputtur, he studied in the American College, Madurai and Christian College Chennai (then madras). KSK’s interest for science grew in his school days. After taking a master degree in physics, KSK became a demonstrator in chemistry. Here, at the request of some of his students, KSK organized an informal lunch-hour discussion where the students were free to discuss any question in physics, mathematics, and chemistry. It became so popular that students from nearby Colleges stated attending it. Often the big gallery of the lecture room used to be full to over flowing.

In 1920, Krishnan went to work with C.V. Raman at the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, Kolkata (then Calcutta). KSK worked very hard. It is said that his work in the laboratory began at 6 A.M., often after an early walk and a cold bath. But his interests were not confined to research alone. He also studied a lot of literature, religion and philosophy. At the age of 62, on 14 June 1961, he died after a heart attack.
Komaravolu S. Chandrasekharan
BIOGRAPHY
Komaravolu S. Chandrasekharan is a famous scientist who worked in the fields of number theory and summability and also was a most successful editor of the Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society.

He was a founder faculty of School of Mathematics, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR).

K. Chandrasekharana was born on November 21, 1920 inMachilipatnam in modern-day Andhra Pradesh. He started his education from District Board School in Guntur District, Andhra Pradesh. Then he joined high School at Bapatla in Guntur. After that he got his M. A. in Mathematics from the Presidency College, Madras and was a Research Scholar in the Department of Mathematics of the University of Madras from 1940 to 1943. At the same year he worked as a part-time Lecturer in the Presidency College and also obtained his Ph D during under Ananda Rau, Who was with Ramanujan in Cambridge.

After getting Ph D, Dr. K. Chandrasekharan went to the Institute for further Study, Princeton, U.S.A. and it was during his stay in Princeton that he was invited by Homi Bhabha to join the School of Mathematics of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR). He worked hard to make the School of Mathematics of TIFR into a centre of excellence recognized worldwide. He established a successful method of recruiting and training of Research Scholars at TIFR. Today also the programme continues with the same lines that he set down. He put to excellent use his contacts with the leading mathematicians of the world, persuading many of them (Like L. Schwartz, a Fields medalist and C.L. Siegel) to visit TIFR and deliver courses of lectures over periods of two months and more. The lecture notes prepared out of these lectures and published by TIFR enjoy a great reputation in the world mathematics community to this day. He left the TIFR in 1965 and went to the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule Zurich, where he retired in 1988 and is now emeritus. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 1959, Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in 1963, and the Ramanujan Medal in 1966.
P.C. Mahalanobis
P.C. Mahalanobis (1893 - 1972 )
Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis was a great scientist and applied statistician. He is famous for the ‘Mahalanobis Distance’, a statistical measure. He did pioneering work on anthropometric variation in India.
Professor Mahalanobis made valuable contributions to the development of statistical science in India. He founded the Indian Statistical Institute, and contributed to large-scale sample surveys.

Scientist P.C. Mahalanobis was born on June 29, 1893.He was the son of Prabodh Chandra & Nirodbasini. His father was an active member of the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj. He started education from Brahmo Boys School in Calcutta. Then he completed graduation in physics from the Presidency College, Kolkata in 1912. He also completed Tripos at king’s college, Cambridge. After that he came back to Calcutta, India, and here he was introduced to the Principal of Presidency College and was invited to take classes in physics.

In later life, he contributed prominently to newly independent India’s five year plans starting from the second. His variant of Wassily Leontief’s input-output model was employed in the second and later plans to work towards rapid industrialization of India and with his colleague at his institute; he played a key role in developing the required statistical infrastructure. He also had an abiding interest in cultural pursuits and served, as secretary to Robindranath Tagore, particularly during the latter is foreign travels, and also his alma mater Viswa Bharati University, for some time. He received one of the highest civilian awards Padma Vibhushan from the Government of India for his contribution to science and services to the country. He died on June 28, 1972, a day before his seventy- ninth birthday. Even at this age, he was still active doing research work and discharging his duties as Institute and as the Honorary Statistical Advisor to the cabinet of the Government of India. He had Weldon medal from Oxford University in 1944 and Padma Vibhushan in 1968. He was also elected a fellow of the Royal Society, London in 1945 and Honorary President of International Statistical Institute in 1957.
MEGHNAD SAHA
MEGHNAD SAHA (1893 – 1956 )
MEGHNAD SAHA was a great Indian scientist. He made remarkable contribution to the field of Astrophysics. He put forward an “ionization formula” which explained the presence of the spectral lines.
Meghnad Saha belonged to a poor family and struggled to rise in life. He was born in Seoratali, Dacca district, now in Bangladesh, on October 6, 1893. He was the fifth child of his parents, Sri Jagannath Saha and Smt. Bhubneshwari Devi. His father was a petty grocer who barely managed to keep his large family from starvation. Meghnad Saha started his education in the primary school of the village. The nearest such school was in another village about 10 kilometers away. He was lucky in that one Dr. Anantha Kumar Das took an interest in him and offered free board and lodging, so the young Meghnad could go to school. Later in life, he took every opportunity to express his gratitude to Anantha Kumar Das for this timely help at such a crucial stage, without which his education may never have continued.

Meghnad Saha took admission in the Kishorilal Jubilee School and passed the Entrance examination of the Calcutta University in 1909, standing first among the student from East Bengal obtaining the highest marks in languages (English, Bengali and Sanskrit combined) and in Mathematics. In 1911, he ranked third in the ISc exam while the first position went to another great scientist Satyendranath Bose. After that he took admission in Presidency College Calcutta. In 1913, he graduated from Presidency College with Mathematics major and got the second rank in the first one. In 1915, both S. N. Bose and Meghnad Saha ranked first in M.Sc. exam, Meghnad Saha in Applied Mathematics and S.N. Bose in Pure Mathematics.

In 1917, He started his professional career and joined as lecturer at the newly opened University College of Science in Calcutta. He taught Quantum Physics. Along with S.N. Bose, He translated the papers published in German by Einstein and Hermann Minkowski on relativity into English versions. In 1919, American Astrophysical Journal published – “On Selective Radiation Pressure and its Application” – a research paper by Meghnad Saha. He put forward an “onization formula” which explained the presence of the spectral lines. The formula proved to be a breakthrough in astrophysics. He went abroad and stayed for two years. He spent time in research at Imperial College, London and at a research at Imperial College, London and at a research laboratory in Germany. In 1927, Meghnad Saha was elected as a fellow of ‘London’s Royal Society’.

In 1932, Meghnad Saha moved to Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh Academ y of Science was established. He returned to Science College, Calcutta in 1938. During this time, Saha got interested in Nuclear physics, which later was named after him as Saha Institute of Nuclear physics in the curriculum of higher studies of science. Having seen cyclotrons used for research in nuclear physics abroad, he ordered one to be installed in the institute. In 1950, India had its first cyclotron in operation. He invented an instrument to measure the weight and pressure of solar rays. He produced the famous equation, which he called ‘equation of the reaction-isobar for ionization’, which later became known as Saha’s “Thermo-Ionization Equation”.

Saha was the leading spirit in organizing the scientific societies like the ‘National Academy of Science’ (1930), ‘Indian Institute of Science’ (1935), and the ‘ Indian Association for the Cultivation of science’ (1944). The lasting memorial to him is the ‘Saha Institute of Nuclear physics’ founded in 1943 in Calcutta. He was the chief architect of river planning in India. He prepared the original plan for Damodar Valley Project. Meghnad Saha was an Indian astrophysicist who nominated for the ‘Nobel prize’ in physics in 1935-36. In 1952, he was elected as a Member of Parliament for the North-West Calcutta constituency. He was an advocate for the peaceful use of nuclear energy and instrumental in the reformation of the Indian calendar. He died on February 16, 1956 due to a heart attack.
Prafulla Chandra Roy
Prafulla Chandra Roy (1861 - 1944)
Prafulla Chandra Roy is one of the famous scientists of India and also founder of Bengal chemical & Pharmaceuticals. This was the first pharmaceutical company of India.
Considered as one of the components of the Bengal Renaissance, Prafulla Chandra Roy was an eminent scientist, an exemplary entrepreneur, a patriot and a passionate teacher.

Prafulla Chandra Roy was born on August 2 , 1861 in Raruli- Katipara village, in the district of Khulna (Now in Bangladesh) and died on June 16, 1944. His father, Harish Chandra Roy who was a landlord with liberal views belonged to a wealthy cultured family to Calcutta so that his sons could have higher education. Here, Prafulla Chandra was admitted to the Hare School. He took a great interest in books and read a vast number of them. But a severe attack of dysentery forced him to leave the school. The disease was slowly overcome, but it permanently injured his health; he became a life-long sufferer from chronic indigestion and sleeplessness. When barely ten years old, he learnt Latin and Greek. He also studied the histories of England, Rome and Spain. Two years later, Prafulla Chandra resumed his studies and in 1874 joined the Albert School. But Prafulla Chandra suddenly left for his village, without sitting for the examinations. In the village he mixed with the simple villagers and shared their joys and sorrows. He helped them in many ways.
Professor Raj Reddy
BIOGRAPHY
Dabbala Rajagopal Reddy was born on June 13, 1937 in Katoor, Andhra Pradesh, India. His father Sreenivasulu Reddy was an agricultural landlord and his mother, Pitchamma, was a homemaker.
He is a world-renowned researcher in Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and Human-Computer Interaction better known as "Professor Raj Reddy". Currently, he is serving as the Director of the West Coast campus of Carnegie Mellon University, USA. He received his Becholor degree in civil engineering from Guindy Engineering College of the University, Madras, (Now Anna University, Chennai), India, in 1958. After that Professor Reddy moved to Australia, and there he received his Master’s degree in technology from the University of New South Wales, Australia, in 1960. He also received a doctor’s degree in Computer science from Stanford University in 1966.

On the same year he started his academic career as an Assistant Professor in the same University. After that he joined a member of Carnegie Mellon University faculty in 1969. He was the Founding Director of the Robotics Institute at the University from 1979 to 1991. Now as the Director of the West coast campus. Dr. Reddy’s research interests include the study of human-computer interaction and artificial intelligence. His current research project includes speech recognition and universal digital libraries, an Information Appliance for rural environments for use by illiterate people, where all creative works of the human race are available to anyone anywhere.

On the personal information, Dr. Reddy’s hobbies are walking and basically reading. He lives in Pittsburgh with his wife of 37 years and they have two daughters. His daughters live on the West Coast, in Silicon Valley, California. He visits his native country once a year, his seven brothers and lives near Bangalore. Today, this brilliant scientist is among the most respected names in the US in the field of robotics and artificial intelligence. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan by India in 2001 and the Legion of Honor by President Francois Mitterrand of France in 1984. He is also a fellow of the Acoustical Society of America, IEEE and AAAI, Fellow. He received the 2005 IJCAI Donald E. Walker Distinguished Service Award For, “His outstanding service to the AI community as President of AAAI, Conference Chair of IJCAI-79, and his leadership and promotion of AI internationally,” He also received the IBM Research Ralph Gomory Visiting Scholar Award in 1991.

Recently, Dr. Reddy received the Honda prize for his, “Contributions to eco-technology, the concept that “Contributions to eco-technology, the concept that technology should not pursue efficiency and profits alone but should be geared toward harmony with the environment surrounding human activities.”
Satish Dhawan
Professor Satish Dhawan (1920-2002)
Satish Dhawan was a pioneer engineer and Indian rocket scientist. He was born on September 25, 1920, in Srinagar, India. His father was a high-ranking civil servant of undivided India
and retired as the resettlement Commissioner of Government of India at the time of partition. He completed graduation from the University of Punjab in Lahore (Now in Pakistan). He also completed B.A. in Mathematics and physics, and M.A. in English Literature and a B.E. in Mechanical Engineering. In 1947, he obtained an M.S. in Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Minnesota. Later, he moved to the California Institute of Technology, where he was awarded the Aeronautical Engineer’s Degree in 1949, and a Ph D in Aeronautical and Mathematics in 1951, which he pursued with eminent aerospace scientist Professor Hans W. Liepmann as adviser. Such an educational breadth, covering science, engineering and the humanities, and his distinguished family background, appears to have given him an ability to view the world from many different angles, and may have been responsible for his unique qualities as a leader.

After completion of education he joined the Indian Institute of Science in 1951 and became its Director in 1962. In 1972, He was appointed Chairman of the Space Commission and of the Indian Space Commission and of the Indian Space Research Organization, and Secretary to the Government of India in the Department of Space. In the following decade, he directed the Indian space programme through a period of extraordinary growth and spectacular achievement. Major Programmes were carefully defined and systematically executed, including in particular the launch of Indian satellites on Indian rocket vehicles. Pioneering experiments were carried out in rural education, remote sensing and satellite communications that led to the development of operational systems like INSAT. These projects were all distinguished by their keen sensitivity to the true needs of a developing nation, a confident appreciation of the ability of its scientists and engineers, and the carefully planned involvement of Indian space programme came to be seen in the 1980s as a model of technology development and application carried out within the country.

Professor Satish Dhawan received many awards for his contribution to science and technology, but following awards are few of them.

1) Padma Vibhushan Award, (India’s second highest civilian honour), in 1981.
2) Indira Gandhi Award for National Integration, in 1999.
3) Distinguished Alumnus Award, Indian Institute of Science.
4) Distinguished Alumnus Award, California Institute of Technology, 1969.

Prof. Satish Dhawan passed away on January 3, 2002.
Raja Ramanna
Scientist Raja Ramanna (1925-2004)
Raja Ramanna was a talented personality – an eminent nuclear physicist, a highly accomplished technologist, an able administrator, an inspiring leader, a gifted musician, a scholar of Sanskrit literature and philosophy, and above all a completed human being.
He is well known for his work in “Indian Nuclear Program”. He was born on January 28, 1925 in Tumkur, Karnataka. He was the son of B. Ramanna and Rukminiamma. His father was in the judicial service of the Mysore state and earned the reputation of being a kind-hearted judge.

Raja Ramanna started his studies at “Bishop Cotton Boy’s School, Bangalore. After that he completed graduation from Madras Christian College. He obtained Ph. D. in nuclear physics and L.R.S.M. from King’s College, London. He specialised in nunuclear physics, nuclear reactor physics and design, European music and philosophy. Dr. Raja Ramanna was the director of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) for over a decade. He was also the Union minister of state for defence in 1990 in the V.P. Singh government. In 1997, he became a Member of Parliament through the upper house, the Rajya Sabha. He was also the first director of National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore.

On May 18, 1974, India tested its first nuclear device in the Pokhran desert in Rajasthan. The credit for this achievement goes to Raja Ramanna and his colleagues, as also to Bhabha, who laid the foundation for the country’s nuclear programme. This was, however, not Ramanna’s first success. He was also the man mainly responsible for designing and installing the country’s first series of nuclear reactors, Apsara, Cirus and Purnima. He died on September 23, 2004.
G. N. Ramachandran
G. N. Ramachandran (1922 - 2001)
G. N. Ramachandran was one of those scientists who have made India proud by their research. His full name wasGopalasamudram Narayana Iyer Ramachandran. He was the first person to propose a triple-helical model for the structure of collagen.
He also made other major contributions in biology and physics.

Professor Ramachandran was born on October 8, 1922, in the town of Ernakulam, Kerala, India. He was the son of G.R. Narayana Ayer and Lakshmi Ammal. His father was a Professor of Mathematics at a local college and thus had considerable influence in shaping Ramachandran's interest in mathematics. He obtained his Bachelor degree in science from St. Joseph's College in 1942. He also got a master’s degree in Physics from Madras University with his thesis submitted from Bangalaore (he did not attend any Madras college at that time). He subsequently received his D. Sc. degree in 1947. after that he spent two years at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, where he got his Ph. D. for studies on X-ray diffuse scattering and its application to determination of elastic constants' under the direction of Professor Wiiliam Alfred Wooster, popularly known as W.A. Wooster, a leading crystollagraphy expert in the world.

After completing his Ph.D, he came back to India and joined Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore India in 1949 as an assistant professor of physics. In 1952 he was appointed to Madras University as professor and head of the Department of Physics where he continued his work on crystal physics. Dr. Ramachandran was devastated after the death of his wife Rajalakshmi in the year 1998, and a gradual deterioration in health occurred. During the last few years of his life he suffered a stroke and was affected by Parkinson's disease. Ramachandran died on April 7, 2001, in Chennai, at the age of 78, and left behind him a legacy of scientific discoveries. Leading scientists including Professor Linus Pauling and Sir Francis Crick regarded Professor Ramchandran as a Noble Prize caliber scientist of great reputation.

Important research Contributions:

1) Discovery of the triple helical structure of the connective tissue protein called collagen.

2) Development of the theory of image reconstruction from shadawgraphs (such as X-radiograms) using the Convolution Technique.

3) Ramachandran received a number of national/international awards.
Satyendra Nath Bose
Satyendra Nath Bose (1894-1974)
Satyendra Nath Bose was a Bengali Indian physicist, specializing in mathematical physics. He was well-known for his work “Quantum mechanics” in the early 1920s, providing the foundation for Bose-Einstein statistics and the theory of the Bose-Einstein condensate.
He was born on January 1, 1894 in Calcutta. He was the eldest son of Surendranath and Amodini Devi. His father was employed in the Engineering Department of the East India Railway. He knew many languages and also could play Esraj (a musical instrument similar to violin) very well.

Sateyendra nath Bose began his education at an elementary school and after that he attended Hindu High School in Calcutta. Later on he joined Presidency College in Calcutta in 1909 where he had a brilliant academic record. He was awarded a B.Sc. in 1913 and M.Sc. in 1915 proving him to be by far the best student of mathematics. In the same year he married with Ushabala Ghose. They had five children, three daughters and two sons.

He started his career in 1916 as lecturer in the physics department of Calcutta University. He served here from 1916 to 1921 and Later on he joined Dacca University again as lecturer. In 1926, he became a professor and was made head of the physics department, and continued teaching at Dacca University until 1945. At that time, he returned to Calcutta, and taught at Calcutta University until 1956, when he retired and was made professor emeritus.

In 1956, when he was retired from Calcutta University he was appointed as vice chancellor of Viswa-Bharati University, Shantiniketan. After two year he was honoured with the post of national professor. He was awarded India's second highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan in 1954 by Government of India. He left for heavenly abode on 4 February 1974.
Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar
Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar (1894 – 1955 )
Dr. Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar was a great Scientist of India. He was known as “The Father of Research Laboratories”. He is remembered for having established various chemical laboratories like central Food Processing Technological Institute at Mysore, National chemical laboratory at Pune
(Maharastra), the National Metallurgical Laboratory at Jamshedpur and many others.

Bhatnagar was born on February 21, 1894 in Shahpur, now in Pakistan. His father, Parmeshwari Sahai Bhatnagar passed away when he was only eight months old. He spent his childhood in the house of his maternal grandfather, who was an engineer, where he developed an interest in science and engineering. He used to enjoy building mechanical toys, electronic batteries, and string telephones. From his maternal family he also inherited a gift of poetry, and his Urdu one-act play “Karamati” won the first prize in a competition. After completing his M. Sc. in India, he went to England on a fellowship. He got his D. Sc. degree from the London University in the year 1921, under the guidance of chemistry professor Frederick G. Donna. When he came back, Bhatnagar was presented with proposal of professorship at the renowned Banaras Hindu University.

Bhatnagar used to spend all his spare time in his laboratory doing research. Dr. Bhatnagar was knighted by the British Government in the year 1941 as an award for his research in science, whereas, on March 18, 1943 he was selected as fellow of the Royal Society. Though his area of interest included emulsions, colloids, and industrial chemistry, but his primary contributions were in the spheres of magneto- chemistry. He also made a melodious kulgeet i.e. University song, which is still sung with great pride before any function in his University.

Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru himself was an activist of scientific development. After India gained freedom from British rule in 1947, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research were established under the leadership of Dr. Bhatnagar, who was appointed its first director-general. Later he was awarded ‘Padma Bhushan’. He became the first director-general of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in 1940. He died on 1 January 1955. After his death, ASIR established a Bhatnager Memorial award for eminent scientists in his honour.
C.V. Raman
Chandrasekhar Venkata Raman 1888-1970
Dr. C.V. Raman was one of the greatest scientists of India, who was awarded the 1930 Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the scattering of light and for the discovery of the ‘Raman Effect’, which is named after him. Chandrasekhar Venkata Raman, commonly known as C.V. Raman was born
on November 7, 1888 at Tiruchirapalli in Tamillandu. His mother tongue was Tamil. He was the second children of Chandrasekhar Iyer and Pravathi Ammal. His father was a lecturer in mathematics and physics. Raman was a very brilliant student right from his childhood.

At an early age, Raman moved to the city of Vishakhapatnam, which is situated in state of Andhra Pradesh, where his father accepted a position at the Mr. A V N College. Raman’s academic brilliance was established at a very young age. At the age of twelve, he finished his matriculation education and entered Mr. A V N College and two year later moved to the prestigious presidency college in Madras (Chennai). When he was the age of fifteen he finished at the head of the class too received B. A. with honours in physics and English. In those days, it was a system of government that students who did well academically were typically sent to abroad (England) for additional studies. Because of Raman’s poor health, he was not allowed to go abroad and he continued his studies at the same college. In 1907, barely seventeen, Raman received his Master degree with honors. He got first position in the University in M.A. In the same year, he married with Lokasundari Ammal and with whom he had one son, Radhakrishnan.

He completed his education in Visakhapatanam and Madras (Chennai). After getting top ranking in the Financial Civil Service competitive Exam, he was appointed as Deputy Accountant general in Calcutta. At the time of his graduation, there were few opportunities for scientists in India. This forced him to accept a position with the Indian Civil Services as an Assistant Accountant General in Calcutta. While there, he was able to sustain his interest in science by working, in his remaining time, in the laboratories of the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science. He studied the physics of stringed instruments and Indian drums.

In 1917, he was offered the professor of Physics at the Calcutta University, and he decided to accept this opportunity. After 15 years service at the Calcutta University, he left that job and shifted to Bangalore and became the Director of the Indian Institute of Science, where two years later he continued as a professor of physics. In 1947, the new Government of Independent India appointed him as the first National Professor. He also worked in the field of magnetic attraction and theory of musical instruments. He worked out the theory of transverse vibration of bowed strings, because of superposition velocities. This does a better job in explaining bowed string vibration over Helmholtzs approach.

Professor C V Raman was also the first to investigate the harmonic nature of the sound of the Indian drums such as the tabla and the mridanga. In 1930, for the first time in its history, an Indian scholar, educated entirely in India has received highest honour in science, the ‘Nobel Prize’ in physics. In 1943, he founded ‘Raman Research Institute’, near Bangalore. His discovery of the ‘Raman Effect’ made a very distinctive contribution to Physics. He was also conferred the hishest title of ‘Bharat Ratna’ in 1954. The ‘Raman Effect’ was a demonstration of the ‘Collision’ effect of light bullets (Photons) passing through a transparent medium, whether solid, liquid or gaseous. Raman was also awarded the ‘Lenin Peace Prize’ in 1957. India celebrates National Science day on 28th February every year to commemorate Raman’s discovery.

He retired from the Indian Institute in 1948 and after one year, he established the Raman Research Institute in Bangalore, served as its director and remained active there until his death, at the age of eighty-two. Sir Venkata Raman died on Nevember 21, 1970 at Bangalore, India. We should proud on him.
Sir M. Visvesvaraya
Sir M. Visvesvaraya (1888-1970)
Sir M. Visvesvaraya was an eminent engineer and statesman and played a key role in building of modern India. Architect of Krishnaraja Sagar Dam; devised steel doors to stop the wasteful flow of water in dams. Today perhaps many people know Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya as one of the ablest
engineers of India and creator of the Vrindavan Garden but very few really know his role as one of the builders of modern India, his role in industrializing India, his views on education and planning and so on. He was a real Karmayogi.

Sir Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya, popularly known as Sir M.V., was born on September 15, 1860 in a Muddenahalli village, in Chikballapur Taluk, Kolar District. His father Srinivasa Shastri was a Sanskrit scholar and Ayurvedic practitioner. His mother Venkachamma was a religious woman. His mother tongue is Telugu. His father died in Kurnool when Visvesvaraya was just 15 years old. Visvesvaraya completed his schooling education in Chikkaballapur and after that he joined Central College in Bangalore. He completed his B.A. Examination in 1881. He got some assistance from the Govt. of Mysore and that’s why he joined the Science College, in Pune to study Engineering. In 1883, he ranked first in the L.C.E. and the F.C.E. Examinations (equivalent to B.E. Examination).

When Sir M. Visvesvaraya was doing engineering, Govt. of Bombay offered him a job and appointed as Assistant Engineer at Nasik. As an engineer, he has done wonderful job. He planned a way of supplying water from the river Sindhu to a town called Sukkur (Now in Pakistan). He devised a new irrigation system called the Block System. He devised steel doors to stop the wasteful flow of water in dams. He was the architect of the Krishnaraja Sagara dam in Mysore. The list is endless.

In 1912, Maharaja of Mysore appointed Visvesvaraya as his Dewan. As Diwan of Mysore, he worked tirelessly for educational and industrial development of the state. When he was the Dewan, many new industries came up like ‘The Sandal Oil Factory’, ‘the Chrome Tanning Factory’, were some of them. Of the many factories he started, the most important is the Bhadravati Iron and Steel Works. Sir M. Visvesvaraya voluntarily retired as Dewan of Mysore in 1918. He worked actively even after his retirement. In 1955, He was honoured with Bharat Ratna for his invaluable contribution to the nation. When he reached the age of 100, the Government of India brought out a stamp in his honour. Sir Visvesvaraya passed away on April 14, 1962 at the age of 101. The British also knighted him for his Myriad contributions to the public. Every year, 15 September is celebrated as the Engineer’s Day in India in his memory.
Sisir Kumar Mitra
Sisir Kumar Mitra (1890 – 1963)
Sisir Kumar Mitra was an Indian physicist. He is the doyen of radio science in India. He is known for his seminal work on ionosphere. The ionosphere, which extends from about 60 km to several thousand kilometers high in the atmosphere, plays a major role in long distance radio communications.
The air in the ionosphere is ionized.

Sisir Kumar Mitra was born at Konnagar, a suburb of Calcutta,on 24 October 1890. He was the third son of Joy Krishna Mitra & Sarat Kumari. His father was a school teacher and mother was a doctor in Lady Dufferin Hospital at Bhagalpur in Bihar. Sisir Mitra first went to school in Bhagalpur district and there showed a serious interest in scientific studies. A few years later his two elder brothers died and his father became paralysed, and he would have had to leave school, had it not been for the insistence of his mother, an outstanding woman, that he should continue his education while she supported the family on her earnings from the hospital. After leaving school he admitted to the T.N.J. College, Bhagalpur, and from there in 1908 to Presindency College, Calcutta, where in 1912 he headed the list of successful candidates for the M.Sc. degree in physics.

Prof. Mitra started his career as a lecturer in the T.N.J. College at Bhagalpur and later on transferred to the Christian College, Bankura. He was also responsible for the establishment of Radio Research Board. He was the first Chairman of the Radio Research Committee formed in 1942 and continued in this chair in 1948. His treatise, the Upper Atmosphere received great acclaim. He established the first ionospheric field station in 1955. His interest also included the night sky luminescence, for which he developed a theory of active nitrogen in 1945. Prof. Mitra received many honours including Fellowship of the Royal Society, Presidentship of the Indian National Science Academy, National Professorship, Padma Bhushan Award, 1962. He died after a short period of illness on August 13, 1963.
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920 )
Srinivasa Ramanujan was one of the India’s greatest mathematical geniuses. He made substantial contributions to the analytical theory of numbers and worked on ‘elliptic functions’, ‘continued fractions’, and ‘infinite series’. Srinivasa Ramanujan was a great Mathematician,
who became world famous at the age of twenty-six. He was born on December 22, 1887 in his grandmother’s house in Erode, a small village of Chennai, Tamilnadu, India. He was the son of K. Srinivasa Iyengar & Komalatammal. His father worked in Kumbakonam as a clerk in a cloth merchant’s shop and his mother was a housewife and also sang at local temple. When Ramanujan was a year old, his mother took him to the town of Kumbakonam, near Chennai.

When he was about five years old, Ramanujan admitted to the primary school in Kumbakonam although he would attend several different primary schools before entering the Town High School in Kumbakonam in January 1898. At the Town High School, Ramanujan was the scholar student and showed himself an able all round scholar. In 1990, he began to work on his own on mathematics summing geometric and arithmetic series. In December 1889, he contracted smallpox. Continuing his mathematical work Ramanujan studied continued fractions and divergent series in 1908. At this stage, he became seriously ill again and underwent an operation in April 1909 after which he took him some considerable time to recover. He married on July 14, 1909 when his mother arranged for him to marry a ten-year-old girl S. Janaki Ammal. Ramanujan did not live with his wife, however, until she was twelve year old.

Ramanujan could not complete his college education because of illness. He was so interested in mathematics that he learned on his own. He found out new formulas for solving mathematical problems and wrote articles about them. Professor Hardy a scientist in the Cambridge Univesity saw one his article and impressed by his knowledge, took Ramanujan to England. Ramanujan was considered as the master of theory of numbers. The most outstanding of his contributions was his formula for p(n), the number of ‘partitions’ of ‘n’. It was in 1914, while he was working in Trinity College, he developed the ‘Number Theory’ and for his valuable contribution, was elected the ‘fellow of Trinity College’ on October 18, 1917. He returned to India in 1919 and began Research.

Ramanujan continued to develop his mathematical ideas and began to pose problems and solve problems in the journal of the Indian Mathematical society. He developed relations between elliptic modular equations in 1910. After publication of a brilliant research paper on Bernoulli numbers in 1911 in the Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society he gained recognition for his work. Despite his lack of a University education, he was becoming a well-known personality in the Madras area as a mathematical genius. He was died on April 26, 1920.
Subhash Mukhopadhyay
Subhash Mukhopadhyay
The Great scientist Subhash Mukhopadhyay was born in Calcutta in India. He was educated at the Scottish Church College and after that he joined at the Calcutta Medical College, which was then affiliated to the University of Calcutta. His life and death has been the subject of
countless newspaper reviews and a Bollywood film directed Tapan Sinha entitled “Ek Doctor ki Maut” (Death of a Physician). Dr. Subhash Mukhopadhyay created history when he became the first physician in India and second in the world after British physician Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards to perform the procedure to produce the test tube baby “ Durga” (alias Kanupriya Agarwal ) on October 3, 1978.

Facing social ostracisation, bureaucratic negligence, reprimand, and insult instead of recognition from the Marxist West Bengal Government and refusal of the Government of India to allow him to attend International conferences, he committed suicide in his Calcutta residence in 1981. His feat has been given belated recognition as the Indian physician who in 1986 was “officially” regarded as being the first doctor to perform in-vitro fertilization in India. His reinstatement to glory is attributable to Professor T.C. Anand Kumar who is credited to be the mastermind behind India’s second (officially the first) test tube baby. Professor Kumar took the crown off his own head after reviewing personal notes of Dr. Subhash Mukhopadhyay. Professor Sunit Mukherji, who was a one time colleague of Dr. Mukhopadhyay, ably helped him. Professor Kumar is currently active in setting up a Research Institute in reproductive biology in memory of Dr. Mukhopadhyay.
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910-1995)
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, a ‘Nobel Laureate’ in physics and one of the greatest astrophysicists of modern times was born on October 19, 1910 in Lahore, Punjab, British India (now in Pakistan). He was the son of Mr. C.S. Ayer and Sita Balkrishnan. His father was a civil servant,
attaining a high position with the Indian railways. The Ayer had three sons and five daughters of whom Chandra was the oldest son. In 1916, the family moved to Madras where Chandra grew up. Chandrasekhar came from a highly educated South Indian family. He was the nephew of Indian Nobel Laureate Sir C.V.Raman.

Chandra was a brilliant student. At 15, he entered Presidency College, the most prestigious in Madras; in 1927, he started their physics honors course, graduating in 1930 at the top of his class. He read far beyond the curriculum, for instance about Fermi statistics, where he was most intrigued by Ralph H. Fowler’s work on the constitution of white dwarf stars. This subject inspired him to write his first scientific paper, “Compton Scattering and the New Statistics”, which was published in the “Proceedings of the Royal Society” in 1928. Upon graduation, based on this paper, Fowler at the University of Cambridge accepted him as a research student.

Being the nephew of the great C.V. Raman, a Nobel Prize winner in physics young Chandrasekhar’s interest in the subject came naturally to him. In 1930, at the age of 19, he completed his degree in physics from Presidency College, Madras (at Present Chennai) and went to England for post graduate studies at the Cambridge University. Chandrasekhar worked hard as a research student, and after he had taken his PhD, he was elected a fellow of Trinity College. Now feeling relaxed and more confident, he returned to the problem of white dwarfs. By a more complete calculation, he confirmed his earlier result: there is an upper limit to the mass of white dwarf. He was invited to give a talk on this subject at the Royal Astronomical Society in January 1935. But after his lecture, Eddington stood up and rejected Chandra’s results, not by scientific argument but by ridiculing the combination of special relativity theory with quantum statistics. Chandra was devastated.

Chandrasekhar was renowned for his work in the field of stellar evolution, and in the early 1930s, he was the first to theorise that a collapsing massive star would become an object so dense that not even light could escape it, now known as the Black hole. He demonstrated that there is an upper limit (known as ‘Chandrasekhar Limit’) to the mass of a White dwarf star. His theory challenged the common scientific notion of the 1930s that all stars, after burning up their fuel, became faint, planer-sized remmants known as white dwarfs. But today, the extremely dense neutron stars and black holes implied by Chandrasekhar’s early work are a central part of the field of astrophysics. Initially peers and professional journals in England rejected his theory. The distinguished astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington publicly ridiculed his suggestion that stars could collapse into such objects (black holes). Of course, Eddington was wrong. However, his resistance to Chandra’s mass limit was understandable: his life’s work had been to show that every star, whatever it’s mass, had a stable configuration. It was generally believed that white dwarfs were the end stage of stellar evolution, after their energy source was exhausted. Why should there be a limit to the mass of a star in its old age? Chandra appealed to physicists he knew- Rosenfeld, Bohr, and Pauli. Unanimously, they decided that there was no flaw in his argument. However, it took decades before the Chandrasekhar limit was accepted by the astrophysics community.

Disappointed, and reluctant to engage in public debate, Chandrasekhar moved to America, in 1937 joined the faculty as an Assistant Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Chicago, and remained there until his death. At Chicago, he immersed himself in a personalized style of research and teaching, tackling first one field of astrophysics and then another in great depth. He wrote more than half a dozen definitive books describing the results of his investigations. More than 100000 copies of his highly technical books have been sold. He also served as editor of the Astrophysical Journal, the field’s leading journal, for nearly 20 years; he presided over a thousand colloquia; and supervised PhD research for more than 50 students. Chandrasekhar was a creative, prolific genius whose ability to combine mathematical precision with physical insight changed humanity’s view of stellar physics.

The genius Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, known to the world as Chandra, died on August 21, 1995 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He is best known for his discovery of the upper limit to the mass of a white dwarf star, for which he received the ‘Nobel Prize’ in physics in 1983.
M.K. VAINU BAPPU
M.K. VAINU BAPPU (1927-1982)
Manali Kallat VAINU BAPPU was a great astronomer and president of the International Astronomical Union. Being one of the greatest astronomers of India, Vainu has contributed much to the revival of optical astronomy in Independent India. Vainu was born on August 10, 1927 to a senior astronomer in theNizamiah Observatory, Hyderabad.
He was the only child of Manali Kukuzhi and Sunanna Bappu. Vainu Bappu was not only excelled in studies but took active part in debates, sports and other extra curricular activities. However astronomy to which he was exposed from an early age became his passion. Being a keen amateur astronomer, even as an undergraduate, he had published papers on variable star observations. After getting his Masters degree in physics from Madras University, Vainu Bappu joined the prestigious Harvard University on a scholarship.

Within a few months of his arrival at Harvard University, Bappu discovered a comet and it was named Bappu-Bok-Newkirk after him and his colleagues Bart Bok and Gordon Newkirk. He completed his Ph D in 1952 and joined the fellowship. He and Colin Wilson made an important observation about the luminosity of particular kind of stars. This important observation came to known as the Bappu-Wilson effect and is used to determine the luminosity and distance of these kinds of stars. He came back to India in 1953 and played a major role in building the Uttar Pradesh State Observatory in Nainital. In 1960, he look over a as the director of the kodaikanal observatory and contributed a lot in the modernization of it. In 1986, he established the observatory with a powerful telescope in Kavalur, Tamilnadu.

He was awarded the "Donhoe Comet Medal" by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific in 1949. He was elected as the President of the International Astronomical Union in 1979. He was also elected as the Honorary Foreign Fellow of the Belgium Academy of Sciences and was an Honorary Member of the American Astronomical Society. He died on 19 August 1982 but his name will always be remembered in the history of modern indian astronomy. He was the first indian astronomer whose name had tagged to a comet bappu-bok-new kirk. He succeeded to establish indian institute of astrophysics at bangalore. His ambition of setting up a powerful 2.34m telescope was materialized in 1986, four years after his death.
 
   Testimonials
"Your class is very interesting you have changed my thoughts and views in good member you have given a good massage to every Children."
Revanth
10th Class, MGM School, Hyderabad
Read More..
"I think if I will attempt all the points if which you have explained I will be the state Rank this you. I have very very much inspired if the screens which you have showed"
Ashok
10th Class, MGYV, Bhimavaram
Read More..
"Your class was really effective, I am really thankful to you as I learnt many facts you provided us the things that we are locking at present"
M. Manisha
10th Class, Roots, Tanuku
Read More..


 
 
All rights reserved © 2010 learning by meaning