C. V. Raman

Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman was born in Tiruchirappalli in 1888 into a family of scholars, and showed early academic promise before pursuing a career that combined government service with independent scientific research. In 1928, working in Calcutta, he discovered that when light passes through a transparent medium, a small fraction of it scatters at a different wavelength than the incident light — a phenomenon that became known as the Raman Effect. The discovery gave scientists a powerful new tool for probing molecular structure, and in 1930 Raman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for it, becoming the first Asian and first non-white scientist to win a Nobel Prize in any of the sciences. He went on to found the Raman Research Institute in Bangalore, where he continued research into acoustics, optics, and the physics of musical instruments and precious stones until his death in 1970. His discovery remains foundational to Raman spectroscopy, a technique used widely today in chemistry, materials science, and medical diagnostics.