The 19th-century Indians who nurtured a self-reliant scientific culture in colonial India
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One afternoon in 1907, a young accountant named Chandrasekhar Venkata Raman walked into the laboratory of the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science at 210 Bowbazar Street in Calcutta.
Though he had a passion for the sciences, colonial India offered no stable careers in the field, so Raman had joined the Indian Finance Service.
But after work, Raman started a series of pathbreaking experiments – first in sound, then in optics – at the laboratory of the IACS, an institution that had been established just over three decades earlier specifically to popularise science and encourage Indians to conduct research at a time when such opportunities were scarce.
Soon, Raman (who would go on to become the secretary of the IACS) along with his associate KS Krishnan started experiments related to light. The phenomenon he recorded, where light changes its wavelength when scattered by molecules of a liquid, is called Raman Effect.
In 1930, this work earned Raman the Nobel Prize in Science, making him the first person from Asia to win this award.
Raman’s illustrious career was the fulfillment of the dream of Dr Mahendralal Sircar, who had started the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science on July 29, 1876, with an express ambition: “to invite, encourage and...