GLOBAL BEACON C.V. RAMAN (1888–1970)

His groundbreaking discovery on the scattering of light, the Raman Effect, inspired a league of scientists at home

- SANDIP TRIVEDI

Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, one of Indian’s greatest scientists, is best known for his pathbreaking discovery, along with student K.S. Krishnan, of the Raman Effect. For this, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1930. Usually when light scatters, through a process called Rayleigh scattering, it changes direction but not its energy. This happens, for example, when light scatters from dust in the atmosphere, leading to the sky being blue. Raman and Krishnan found a new method of scattering in which light changes both its direction and energy