National Science Day 2023: The Raman Effect, which CV Raman won the Nobel for

Last Updated01/03/2023

India celebrates National Science Day every year on February 28th.
In 1986, the Union Government, under then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, designated February 28 as National Science Day.
National Science Day is celebrated every year to commemorate the discovery of the “Raman Effect” by Sir C.V. Raman.
Physicist Sir CV Raman won the Nobel Prize in 1930 for the discovery of the Raman Effect.
The theme for National Science Day 2023 in light of India’s G20 presidency is “Global Science for Global Wellbeing”.

Birth: 7th November 1888 in Tiruchirapalli in modern Tamil Nadu.
Education: The Presidency College at Chennai in 1902 aged just 13 for his graduation.
He passed out in 1904 with a Gold Medal in Physics.
Post-graduation: The University of Madras in 1907 with distinction.
He continued to do research at the Indian Association for Cultivation of Sciences in Calcutta (IACS) and also published papers in leading international journals such as ‘Nature’ and ‘Physics Review’.
It was at IACS that Raman along with his collaborators discovered what is now called the “Raman Effect”.
This discovery on the scattering of light was made on February 28, 1928.
This effect proved the quantum nature of light and had huge value at that time.
The Raman Spectroscopy was based on this phenomenon.
For this discovery, Raman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in the year 1930. He became the first Indian, Asian and non-white person to win a Nobel Prize for the sciences.
In 1933, he became the first Indian Director of the Indian Institute of Science (IISC) in Bangalore.
He was the institute’s director till 1937 and the Head of the Physics Department till 1948.
In 1948, he founded the Raman Research Institute (RRI) in Bangalore for conducting experiments in Physics. He continued to do research at RRI till his death in 1970.