INDIAN SCIENTISTS WHO
RULED THE CENTURY

The past two centuries saw many great Indian scientists, including Nobel laureates and Fellows of the Royal Society.The list of outstanding Indian scientists of modern times is toppeed by Srinivasa Ramanujam, a mathematics genius whose life was claimed at the young age of 33 by tuberculosis.

Srinivasa Ramanujam (1887-1920)
India's mathematical genius made outstanding achievements in the field of number theory, algebric inequalities and fractions. Both his published and unpublished works have some of the best mathematical brains in the world busy to this day.

Often described as a 'romantic mathematician', Ramanujam sometimes by sheer imagination came upon several intricate theorems, with out supplying 'proofs'. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Britain.

Jagdish Chandra Bose(1860-1937)
A great biologist and the first Indian scientist to have been knighted by the British king for his contributions in Botany and other fields of science, Bose disproved the belief that only westerners could achieve anything worthwhile in science.

Not only did he make pioneering discoveries, but also his own scientific instruments. Bose was the first scientist to show that plants have life. He explained that all green plants take in oxygen at night and give out carbon dioxide, have movement and react to response. He proved that plants, too, have feelings and stimuli like animals and respond to wireless and ultraviolet waves that humans cannot see.

Bose is also credited with inventing the wireless earlier than Marconi, but being a citizen of British India, could not announce his discovery.

He also invented the Crescograph that detects even the minutest of plant movements and growth. He was honoured as Fellow of Royal Society in 1920.

Prafulla Chandra Ray(1861-1944)
Conferred with knighthood by the British, P C Ray was one of the great pioneers in establishing Indigenous industries, specially in the field of chemicals and pharmaceuticals.

Ray prepared an indigenous nerve tonic by preparing crystals of sodium phosphate from bone ash. This laid the foundation of a pharmaceutical compnay that came to be known as Bengal Chemical Works.

Chandrashekhar Venkata Raman (1888-1970)
India's first Nobel laureate was awarded the coveted prize in 1930 for his research on scattering of light in different media - a phenomenon known worldwide as the Raman Effect.The Raman Effect has helped deeper understanding of the interior structure of molecules and atoms, and led to development of industries such as colour photography. plastics and synthetic rubber.

The Raman Effect also unveiled mysteries of optics, acoustics, and colloids. He was elected fellow of the Royal Society in London in 1924. He was conferred the Bharat Ratna in 1954.

Satyendranath Bose (1894-1974)
Working on radiation, S N Bose showed that light units called photons were identical and expressed the thermodynamic properties of an assembly of photons. He also solved several equations and formulae of Max Planck's laws on thermodynamics.

It was none other than Albert Einstein who realised the importance of Bose's discovery and translated it into German.

Ronald Ross (1857-1932)
Born in Uttar Pradesh, Ross worked mostly in Hyderabad and was the first to show in 1897 that malaria is spread by mosquitoes, a crucial discovery that led to development of methods for malaria control.

Subrahmanyam Chandrashekhar (1910-1994)
India's second Nobel laureate, in 1935, the US based S Chandrashekhar surmised the presence of black holes - dense matter with such tremendous amount of gravity that they attract all nearby stars and heavenly bodies.

Chandrashekhar estimated the limit on the size of a highly dense variety of star known as 'White Dwarf'. If this star's mass exceeds the limit, it explodes to become a bright supernova. He also made significant contributions to understanding the atmosphere of stars and the way matter and motion are distributed among the stars in the galaxy.

Chandrashekar, who recieved the Nobel Prize in 1983, was honoured this year when the largest x-ray telescope aboard the US Space Shuttle was named 'Chandra Telescope'.

Meghnad Saha (1893-1956)
Meghnad Saha was one of the most original astrophysicists of modem science. He is best remembered for his equations connecting a star and an atom, that laid the foundations of astrophysics. All subsequent progress in the field is an elaboration of original and seminal ideas of Saha.

K S Krishnan (1898-1961)
One of the most outstanding students of C V Raman, and later his research associate, Krishnan gave valuable help to Raman for his work on Raman Effect which earned him the Nobel Prize.

When India gained independence in 1947 and several national laboratories started getting established, the brilliant physicist was made the first director of the National Physical Laboratory in New Delhi.

Hargovind Khorana (1922)
The India-born US-settled scientist was awarded the Nobel prize in medicine along with Marshall Nierenberg and Robert Holley for breaking the genetic code.

Khorana also produced the first man-made gene - building piece by piece part of a gene of a yeast cell in his laboratory. The man-made gene when inserted into a bacterium worked like a natural gene, paving the way for modern-day genetic engineering.

M Visvesvaraya (1861-1962)
One of India's pioneering engineers, M Visveswaraya was the architect of the Krishna Dam one of the biggest dams in India that irrigates over one lakh hectares.

He exhibited his foresight for industrialisation and educational enterprise by starting several institutions, including the Mysore University, Bhadravati Iron and Steel works and Mysore Soap Factory.

Source: Observer