Contents
* 1 Early years * 2 Career * 3 Personal life * 4 Honours and awards * 5 Publications * 6 See also * 7 Notes * 8 References * 9 Further reading * 10 External links
[edit] Early years
Venkata Raman was born at Thiruvanaikaval, near Tiruchirappalli, Madras Presidency to R. Chandrasekhara Iyer (b. 1866) and Parvati Ammal (Saptarshi Parvati).[1] He was the second of their eight children. At an early age, Raman moved to the city of Vizag, Andhra Pradesh. Studied in St.Aloysius Anglo-Indian High School. His father was a lecturer in Mathematics and physics, so he grew up in an academic atmosphere.
Raman entered Presidency College, Chennai in 1902. In 1904, he gained his B.Sc., winning the first place and the gold medal in physics. In 1907, he gained his M.Sc., obtaining the highest distinctions. He joined the Indian Finance Department as an Assistant Accountant General.
[edit] Career
In 1917, Raman resigned from his government service and took up the newly created Palit Professorship in Physics at the University of Calcutta. At the same time, he continued doing research at the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, Calcutta, where he became the Honorary Secretary. Raman used to refer to this period as the golden era of his career. Many students gathered around him at the IACS and the University of Calcutta.
Energy level diagram showing the states involved in Raman signal.
On February 28, 1928, through his experiments on
References: 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.