5th October 2016
Kolkata is often called the city of ‘bhadralok’, or ‘noble people’ – a city that has been home to educational elites for more than a century. Remarkably, it is also the city that has bred five Nobel laureates.
24th August 2016
The Nobel Prize is one of the most prestigious awards at the international level. The award honours academic, cultural and/or scientific advances.
2nd May 2016
Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen was a German physicist. In 1895 he was working with cathode rays when he discovered a different kind of electromagnetic radiation. Since the radiation was unknown at that time, he called it the X-rays. He received the first Nobel Prize in physics in 1901 for this discovery.
18th March 2016
20 August 1897 is officially considered to be the day when Ronald Ross identified the malaria parasite in the Anopheles mosquito. His finding had tremendous impact on the fight against the disease, for which he was awarded Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1902, and later knighted. It was indeed a remarkable achievement for Ronald Ross, who had failed the Licentiate examination of the Society of Apothecaries as a medical student.
16th February 2016
Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck was a German physicist who discovered quantum physics. He was the founder of quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918. Planck’s life was dotted with tragic occurrences. His first wife died early. His younger son died in World War I. He had twin daughters, one of which died during childbirth. The other twin married the husband of the first twin sister. They married and after two years she also died during childbirth. In 1944, when Planck was eighty-five, during World War II, a bomb fell on his house destroying all his documents and a lifetime of accumulations. The next year, his only surviving son was executed after being caught in a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler.
10th February 2016
Linus Pauling was a chemist who contributed immensely to the knowledge of chemistry and biological molecules. For his research on the chemical bonds and their application to find out the structure of complex molecules, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954. Since 1946, Pauling had ceaselessly championed against the nuclear tests and all forms of war, which was used as a means to solve national and international conflicts, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962.