India's most famous scientists
India is considered as one of the most crucial places in academic and scientific developments all over the world. Right from the invention of the number zero, India's scientists have done the country proud. Though the scientific community has its share of hundreds of geniuses, there are some who can be set apart for their noble attitude and genius. This list of India's top five scientists takes their inventions and their simplistic nature into account.
Professor C.V Raman
C.V Raman's name is quiet familiar in all science textbooks under the phenomenon of Raman Effect. He was motivated to discover the cause of the blue color of seas and glaciers. Through his experiments, he found that light gets scattered and wavelength changes when it hits an object. This is now called Raman Effect and is one of the basic foundations which establish the quantum nature of light.
C.V Raman was given the Bharath Ratna award, the highest honor offered to a civilian in the country in recognition of his efforts as a physicist. He was also given a large number of medals and a Knighthood for his inventions. C.V Raman was active until his death. He collapsed in his lab while doing an experiment due to heart failure. But that dint stop him and the very next day he gathered his students and said the scores of academic papers in the institute must be safe guarded at any cost for its value which will be realized sooner or later. He death was natural and was on the 21st November 1970.
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar is considered to be a relative of C.V Raman. True to his ancestory, he did his country proud by discovering the Chandrasekhar limit. Chandrasekhar studied the stellar structure, stellar dynamics, white dwarf theory and many more subjects before reaching his conclusion that the mass of a white dwarf cannot exceed 1.44 times the mass of the sun. This is called the Chandrasekhar limit. Along with William .A. Fowler, he won the Nobel Prize for physics in the year 1983.
Chandrasekhar also did pioneering work in the theory of black holes, Gravitational waves and General relativity. His work in revising stellar dynamics comprised of solving 20 partial differential equations with the finding of a new term called dynamic friction. Chandrasekhar was an atheist. He believed that science and knowledge was the highest power in the universe and stressed this many times in many interviews.
Satyendra Nath Bose
Satyendra Nath Bose is well known from the invention of the Bose-Einstein statistics and the Bose-Einstein Condensate. He was awarded the Padma Vibhushan, the second highest honor for a civilian in the country. He had developed a new way for computing statistics and wrote to Einstein a letter that sought his help. Though Einstein and Bose had never met face to face, he conceded and helped Bose in publishing a paper in a German journal
Bose then worked with people of the like of Marie curie, Albert Einstein and Louis De Broglie. Bose was a person with interest in many fields. Besides Physics, he also pursued Chemistry, Biology, Mineralogy, Philosophy, Fine Arts and Music. Bose was Polyglot and could hence learn languages easily.
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Ramanujan is recognized as one of the most brightest and famous mathematicians of India. Though he had no formal training in the subject of pure mathematics, he published close to 3900 results which have been proven, being proved and yet to be proven. His works in mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series and continued fractions were completely original and unconventional. He discovered the Ramanujan theta and the Ramanujan prime which were solid backbones to his theory and have now been proved by other mathematicians.
Ramanujan's personal life was however far from healthy. He had repeated episodes of one form of sickness or the other. At a young age he was affected by small pox, but recovered miraculously unlike kids of his age. However he died at the age of 32 due to severe stress. It was later established that his cause of death could have been Hepatitic Amoebiasis, a parasitic liver infection. Ramanujan was a deeply spiritual person and attributed all his success to his family goddess, Mahalakshmi.
A.P.J Abdul Kalam
The late president of India, Dr A.P.J Abdul Kalam is one of the pioneers of the Indian space research organization. His contributions to missile systems are paralleled by none. But more than that his love to his country earned him respect and made him the president of India. His contributions to the ballistic systems and launch vehicle development are still being used in ISRO. His life was that of humble beginnings. He was born and bought up in Rameshwaram in South India. He worked as a newspaper boy in the mornings to help his family meet ends. He studied Physics and Aerospace engineering with great interest and is now called the Missile Man of India.
Dr A.P.J Abdul Kalam is well known for his love to children. He believed that they are the key to the future of India and must be educated. His dream of a developed India in the Year 2020 led him to even publish a book which gives the strengths of India and where it needs to improve.