Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman

Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman (November 7, 1888 – November 21, 1970) was an Indian physicist whose work was influential in the growth of science in India. His spirit of inquiry and devotion to science laid the foundations for scientific research in India. He was the first Asian scientist to win a Nobel Prize for Physics in 1930 for the discovery that when light traverses a transparent material, some of the light that is deflected changes in wavelength. This phenomenon is now called Raman Scattering and is the result of the Raman Effect.

Homi Jehangir Bhabha

A multifaceted personality - scientist, visionary and institution builder, Homi Jehangir Bhabha was born on October 30, 1909.He is known as the chief architect of India`s nuclear programme. He also established two great research institutions – namely the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, and the Atomic Energy Establishment at Trombay. He played a crucial role in the development of electronics in India. He derived a correct expression for the probability of scattering positrons by electrons, a process now known as Bhabha Scattering. His classic paper, jointly with W. Heitler, published in 1937, described how primary cosmic rays from space interact with the upper atmosphere to produce particles observed at the ground level. In 1938 Bhabha was the first to conclude that observations of the properties of such particles would lead to the straightforward experimental verification of Albert Einstein`s theory of `relativity`.

APJ Abdul Kalam

Also known as the Missile Man of India, Dr. Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam was born on 15-10-1931 in Rameshwaram, Tamil Nadu. Kalam joined the Defence Research Development Organisation (DRDO) in 1958 and served as a senior scientific assistant, heading a small team that developed a prototype hovercraft. Then he moved out of DRDO in 1962 and joined the Indian space programme. From 1963 to 1982, he served the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in various capacities. Scientist APJ Abdul Kalam was responsible for sending Rohini satellite into the earth’s orbit using SLV-3. He played a pivotal organizational, technical and political role in India`s Pokhran-II nuclear tests in 1998, the first since the original nuclear test by India in 1974.

Vikram Ambalal Sarabhai

Vikram Ambalal Sarabhai (August 12, 1919 – December 30, 1971) was an Indian physicist, popularly considered to be the "Father of the Indian Space Programme". It was Sarabhai who put India on the international map in the field of space research. He made equally pioneering contributions in other fields and worked in the fields of textiles, pharmaceuticals, nuclear power, electronics and many others incessantly. Sarabhai was a creative scientist, a successful and forward looking industrialist, an innovator of the highest order, a great institution builder, an educationist with a difference, a connoisseur of arts, an entrepreneur of social change, a pioneering management educator and more.

Jagadish Chandra Bose

Jagadish Chandra Bose (November 30, 1858 – November 23, 1937) is regarded as India’s first modern scientist. He was a physicist, biologist, botanist, archaeologist, as well as an early writer of science fiction. He pioneered the investigation of radio and microwave optics and laid the foundations of experimental science in the Indian subcontinent. IEEE named him one of the fathers of radio science. Bose subsequently made a number of pioneering discoveries in plant physiology. He used his own invention, the crescograph, to measure plant response to various stimuli, and thereby scientifically proved parallelism between animal and plant tissues.

Satyendra Nath Bose

Satyendra Nath Bose (January 1, 1894 – February 4, 1974), a contemporary of Albert Einstein, is best known for his work on quantum physics in 1920. The physicist specialized in mathematical physics, which was then in its infancy. He worked with Einstein and their work led to the concept of Bose-Einstein statistics in Particle Physics and later a theory – the Bose Einstein condensate- about a fifth state of matter (a super fluid). The class of particles that obey Bose-Einstein statistics, bosons, was named after him by Paul Dirac. For his contribution to Science, he was awarded India`s second highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan, in 1954 by the Government of India.

Srinivasa Ramanujan

Srinivasa Ramanujan (December 22, 1887 – April 26, 1920) was one of India`s greatest mathematical geniuses. The contribution of S. Ramanujan is widespread in fields of Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, Calculus, Number theory etc. He has also made some extraordinary contributions to fields like Hyper-geometric series, Elliptic functions, Prime numbers, Bernoulli`s numbers, Divergent series, Continued fractions, Elliptic Modular equations, Highly Composite numbers, Riemann Zeta functions, Partition of numbers, Mock-Theta functions etc.

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (October 19, 1910-August 21, 1995) was one of the foremost astrophysicists of the twentieth century. Chandra proved that there was an upper limit to the mass of a white dwarf. This limit, known as the Chandra limit, showed that stars more massive than the Sun would explode or form black holes as they died. Chandra also developed theories on star atmospheres, black holes, illumination of the sunlit sky, star structures and star mass. In 1983, Chandra was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the physical processes involved in the structure and evolution of stars.

Har Gobind Khorana

Har Gobind Khorana (January 9, 1922 – November 9, 2011) was a biochemist who shared the 1968 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Marshall W. Nirenberg and Robert W. Holley for research that helped to show how the nucleotides in nucleic acids, which carry the genetic code of the cell, control the cell’s synthesis of proteins. Khorana`s work is an important scientific landmark of the 20th Century. It has brought closer the day, when synthetic DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid) may be introduced into 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 (Ribonucleic acid), capable of replication in laboratory, is a step towards the creation of life artificially.

By Ritu Singh and Shruti Saxena