Profile of the Month:
Sir C.V.Raman
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Chandrashekhara Venkata Raman or C V Raman, as we popularly know him, was born on 7th
Nov. 1888 in Thiruvanaikkaval. He finished school by the age of eleven and by then he had
already read the popular lectures of Tyndall, Faraday and Helmoltz. He acquired his BA
degree from the Presidency College, Madras, where he carried out original research in the
college laboratory, publishing the results in the philosophical magazine. After joining
the financial services of the Indian Government at the age of eighteen, he carried out and
published extensive research on acoustics and optics in his free time for a decade.
Also around the time he was married to 'Loksundari'. In 1917 he was offered the 'PALIT
CHAIR' in physics in Calcutta University by the then Vice Chancellor Ashutosh Mukherjee.
In 1921 he delivered a lecture at the oxford conference on the theory of stringed
instruments. In 1924 he became 'FELLOW' of the Royal society and was eventually knighted
by the British Government.
While in Calcutta, he made enormous contributions to vibration, sound, musical
instruments, ultrasonics, diffraction, photoelectricity, colloidal particles, X-ray
diffraction, magnetron, dielectrics, and the celebrated "RAMAN" effect which
fetched him the Noble Prize in 1930. The mood of self-confidence can be gauged from
the fact that he had his tickets to Sweden booked before the prize was announced. From
1933 till 1970 (his death) he lived and worked in Bangalore, first at the IISc and then
his own (Raman Research Institute).
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All in all, he published 475 papers and wrote five monographs on an incredibly wide
range of topics. He enthused generations of younger people with his excitement about
nature and science, and left an incredible mark on the landscape of India.
THE RAMAN EFFECT
For more inquisitive minds, the Raman effect occurs when a ray of incident light
excites a molecule in the sample, which subsequently scatters the light. While most of
this scattered light is of the same wavelength as the incident light, some is scattered at
a different wavelength.
This inelastically scattered light is called 'RAMAN SCATTER' which, results from molecule
changing its molecular motion. Energy difference between incident light & the Raman
scattered light is equal to the energy involved in changing the molecule vibrational state
(i.e. getting the molecule to vibrate) |
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"Great advances in knowledge came through questioning the orthodox view"
-SIR CV RAMAN
The Raman effect is useful in the study of molecular energy levels, structure development,
and multi component qualitative analysis. |
