145. Chandrasekhar Venkata Raman


Chandrasekhar Venkata Raman, popularly known as C.V.Raman was born in Thiruchinapalli, in Tamil Nadu on November 1888. He was the second child of Chandrasekhar Iyer and Parvathi Ammal. His father was a lecturer in mathematics and physics so that from the first he was immersed in an academic atmosphere. At a very early age, Raman moved to the city of Vishakapatnam, which is in the state of Andhra Pradesh. On May 6, 1907, he married Lokasundari Ammal.

Raman grew up in an atmosphere of music, Sanskrit literature and science. At the age of eleven he finished his secondary school education and two years later moved to the prestigious Presidency College in Madras. In 1904, when he was fifteen, he received B.A with Honors in Physics and English. He gained his M.A degree in 1907 obtaining the highest distinctions. After completing his studies, Raman became an accountant in the finance department of the Indian government. He was elected to the Royal Society of London in 1924.

At the time of Raman’s 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. Love of science, enthusiasm for work and the curiosity to learn the new things were natural to Raman. He took immense interest in the study of sound. When he was eighteen years of age one of his research papers was published in the ‘Philosophical Magazine’ of England. Later another paper was published in the scientific journal ‘Nature’.

He became Professor of Physics at the University of Calcutta in 1917. He worked there till 1948. And then he became the Director of the Raman Institute of Research at Bangalore which was established and endowed by him. We are delighted by the rainbow. We see it in shades of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. The white ray of the sun includes all these colors. When a beam of sunlight is passed through a glass prism a patch of these color brands are seen. This is called spectrum.