India has produced and continues to produce a lot of greats even in modern times.

Some got a Nobel Prize for what they found and some did not - but that does not matter really. Greats who have helped human knowledge make a quantum leap - even though we have not been able to necessarily find an application for what they found - yet.

The Scientific Indian hopes to motivate minds - young and old - to look up in awe of what can be achieved - and to go beyond what we presently know in any field of knowledge.

Homi Jehangir Bhabha

posted Jul 20, 2013, 1:09 AM by The Scientific Indian   [ updated Nov 2, 2013, 8:09 AM ]


Homi Jehangir Bhabha, FRS (Hindi: होमी भाभा; 30 October 1909 – 24 January 1966) was an Indian nuclear physicist, founding director, and professor of physics at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.[1] Colloquially known as "father of Indian nuclear programme",[2] Bhabha was the founding director of two well-known research institutions, namely the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) and the Trombay Atomic Energy Establishment (now named after him); both sites were the cornerstone of Indian development of nuclear weapons which Bhabha also supervised as its director.

As a result of Bhabha's vision, "India has the most technically ambitious and innovative nuclear energy program in the world. The extent and functionality of its nuclear experimental facilities are matched only by those in Russia and are far ahead of what is left in the US."[8] <More>

India's 3-stage Nuclear Energy Programme was formulated by him in the 1950s.

References: Wikipedia

Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis

posted Jul 20, 2013, 12:59 AM by The Scientific Indian   [ updated Jul 20, 2013, 12:59 AM ]


Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis FRS (Bengali: প্রশান্ত চন্দ্র মহলানবিস) (29 June 1893 – 28 June 1972) was an Indian scientist and applied statistician. He is best remembered for the Mahalanobis distance, a statistical measure. He made pioneering studies in anthropometry in India. He founded the Indian Statistical Institute, and contributed to the design of large-scale sample surveys.

He found a way of comparing and grouping populations using a multivariate distance measure. This measure, D2, which is now named after him as Mahalanobis distance, is independent of measurement scale.

Harold Hotelling wrote: "No technique of random sample has, so far as I can find, been developed in the United States or elsewhere, which can compare in accuracy with that described by Professor Mahalanobis"

Birbal Sahni

posted Jul 20, 2013, 12:52 AM by The Scientific Indian


Birbal Sahni FRS[1] (14 November 1891 – 10 April 1949) was an Indian paleobotanist who studied the fossils of the Indian subcontinent, was also a geologist who took an interest in archaeology. He founded the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany[2] in Lucknow, India. His greatest contributions lie in the study of botany of the plants of India [3] as well as paleobotany.[4][5] Apart from writing numerous influential papers on these topics he also served as the President of the National Academy of Sciences, India and as an Honorary President of the International Botanical Congress, Stockholm. <More>

References: Wikipedia

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

posted Jul 20, 2013, 12:46 AM by The Scientific Indian


Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, FRS (Listeni/ˌʌndrəˈʃkɑr/; October 19, 1910 – August 21, 1995),[1] was an Indian-Americanastrophysicist who, with William A. Fowler, won the 1983 Nobel Prize for Physics for key discoveries that led to the currently accepted theory on the later evolutionary stages of massive stars.[2][3] The Chandrasekhar limit is named after him. Chandrasekhar was the nephew of Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1930.

Chandrasekhar's most notable work was the astrophysical Chandrasekhar limit. The limit was first calculated by Chandrasekhar in 1930 during his maiden voyage from India to Cambridge, England for his graduate studies. In 1999, NASA named the third of its four "Great Observatories" after Chandrasekhar. The Chandra X-ray Observatory was launched and deployed by Space Shuttle Columbia on July 23, 1999. The Chandrasekhar number, an important dimensionless number of magnetohydrodynamics, is named after him. The asteroid 1958 Chandra is also named after Chandrasekhar. American astronomer Carl Sagan, who studied Mathematics under Chandrasekhar, at the University of Chicago, praised him in the book The Demon-Haunted World: "I discovered what true mathematical elegance is from Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar." <More>

References: Wikipedia

Meghnad Saha

posted Jul 20, 2013, 12:31 AM by The Scientific Indian   [ updated Jul 20, 2013, 12:41 AM ]


Meghnad Saha FRS (October 6, 1893 – February 16, 1956) was an Indian astrophysicist best known for his development of the Saha equation, used to describe chemical and physical conditions in stars.

Meghnad Saha's best-known work concerned the thermal ionisation of elements, and it led him to formulate what is known as the Saha equation. He also invented an instrument to measure the weight and pressure of solar rays. <More>


References: Wikipedia

Hargobind Khorana

posted Jul 20, 2013, 12:05 AM by The Scientific Indian   [ updated Jul 20, 2013, 12:19 AM ]


Har Gobind Khorana also known as Hargobind Khorana (January 9, 1922 – November 9, 2011)[2][3] 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 and Nirenberg were also awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University in the same year. <More>

Dr. Khorana, an unassuming man, shied from the spotlight and did not like talking on the phone. In the weeks before he received the National Medal of Science, a stack of message slips piled up on his desk with increasingly urgent messages that the White House had called and that he should call back, Dr. Sakmar said. With the ceremony date fast approaching, a representative of the White House tracked down Dr. Khorana at a scientific meeting and told him he would be receiving the award. Dr. Khorana assured him he would attend. <More>

References: Wikipedia, NY Times

Satyendra Nath Bose

posted Jul 19, 2013, 11:59 PM by The Scientific Indian   [ updated Jul 20, 2013, 12:01 AM ]


Satyendra Nath Bose FRS[1] (Bengali: সত্যেন্দ্র নাথ বসু Shottendronath Boshū, IPA: [ʃot̪ːend̪ronat̪ʰ boʃu]; 1 January 1894 – 4 February 1974) was an Indian physicist specializing in mathematical physics. He was born in Calcutta. He is best known for his work on quantum mechanics in the early 1920s, providing the foundation for Bose–Einstein statistics and the theory of the Bose–Einstein condensate. A Fellow of the Royal Society, the Government of India awarded him India's second highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan in 1954.[2][3][4]

The class of particles that obey Bose–Einstein statistics, bosons, was named after him[5][6][7][8] by Paul Dirac.

Bose's ideas were well received in the world of physics, and he was granted leave from the University of Dhaka to travel to Europe in 1924. He spent a year in France, where he worked with Marie Curie and met several other well-known scientists. He then spent another year abroad, working with Einstein in Berlin. Upon his return to Dhaka, he was made a professor in 1926. He did not have a doctorate, and so ordinarily he would not be qualified for the post, but Einstein recommended him.

Together with Meghnad Saha, he published an equation of state for real gases.

Being of Bengali origin, he devoted time to promoting Bengali as a teaching language, translating scientific papers into it, and promoting the development of the region. <More>

References: Wikipedia

Jagadish Chandra Bose

posted Jul 19, 2013, 8:33 PM by The Scientific Indian   [ updated Jul 19, 2013, 11:28 PM ]


Acharya Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose,[1]CSI,[2]CIE,[3]FRS[4] (Bengali: জগদীশ চন্দ্র বসু Jôgodish Chôndro Boshu; 30 November 1858 – 23 November 1937) was a Bengalipolymath, physicist, biologist, botanist, archaeologist, as well as an early writer of science fiction.[5] He pioneered the investigation of radio and microwaveoptics, made very significant contributions to plant science, and laid the foundations of experimental science in the Indian subcontinent.[6]IEEE named him one of the fathers of radio science.[7] He is also considered the father of Bengali science fiction. He also invented the crescograph. <More>

References: Wikipedia

C.V.Raman

posted Jul 19, 2013, 8:12 PM by The Scientific Indian   [ updated Jul 19, 2013, 11:26 PM ]


Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Rāman, FRS (7 November 1888 – 21 November 1970) was an Indian physicist whose work was influential in the growth of science in India. He was the recipient of the 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.

India celebrates National Science Day on 28 February of every year to commemorate the discovery of the Raman effect in 1928.

C.V. Raman was the paternal uncle of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who later won the Nobel Prize in Physics (1983) for his discovery of the Chandrasekhar limit in 1931 and for his subsequent work on the nuclear reactions necessary for stellar evolution. <More>

References: Wikipedia

Srīnivāsa Aiyangār Rāmānujan

posted Jul 19, 2013, 8:00 PM by The Scientific Indian   [ updated Jul 19, 2013, 11:27 PM ]


Srīnivāsa Aiyangār Rāmānujan FRS, (22 December 1887 – 26 April 1920) was a Indianmathematician and autodidact who, with almost no formal training in pure mathematics, made substantial contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series and continued fractions. Ramanujan's talent was said by the English mathematician G.H. Hardy to be in the same league as legendary mathematicians such as Gauss, Euler, Cauchy, Newton and Archimedes and he is widely regarded as one of the towering geniuses in mathematics. <More>

References: Wikipedia

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