Chandrasekhar Venkata Raman, popularly known as C.V. Raman, was born in Thiruchirapalli, in Tamil Nadu, on November 7, 1888. He was the second of children of Chandrasekhar Iyer and Parvathi Ammal. His father was a professor of Mathematics.
At an early age, Raman moved to the city of Visakhapatnam, in Andhra Pradesh, where his father accepted a position at the A.V.N. College.
Raman’s academic brilliance was established at a very young age. At eleven, he finished his secondary school education and entered A.V.N. College and two years later moved to the prestigious Presidency College in Madras. When he was fifteen, he finished at the head of the class to receive B.A. with honors in Physics and English.
During that time students who did well academically were typically sent abroad (England) for further studies. Because of Raman’s poor health he was not allowed to go abroad and he continued his studies at the Presidency College. In 1907, barely seventeen, Raman again graduated at the top of his class and received his M.A. with honors. In the same year he married Lokasundari.
At the time of Raman’s graduation, there were few opportunities for scientists in India. This forced Raman to accept a position with the Indian Civil Services as an Assistant Accountant General in Calcutta.
In 1917, with his scientific standing established in India, Raman was offered the position of Sir Taraknath Palit Professorship of Physics at Calcutta university, where he stayed for the next fifteen years. During his tenure there, he received world wide recognition for his work in optics and scattering of light.
He was elected to the Royal Society of London in 1924 and the British made him a knight of the British Empire in 1929. The following year he was honoured with the prestigious Hughes medal from the Royal Society. In 1930, for the
first time in its history, an Indian scholar, educated entirely in India has received the highest honour in science, the Nobel Prize in Physics.
In 1934, Raman became the director of the newly established Indian Institute of Sciences in Bangalore, where two years later he continued as a professor of physics. In 1947, he was appointed as the first National Professor by the new government of Independent India. He retired from the Indian Institute in 1948 and a year later he established the Raman Research Institute in Bangalore, served as its director and remained active there until his death on November 21, 1970, at the age of eighty two.
Raman was honoured with the highest award, the Bharat Ratna in 1954 by the Government of India.
