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. Sir Ronald Ross, an Indian-born British doctor, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1902. While working…
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.
Jagadish Chandra Bose as a professor of Physics at Presidency College, Kolkata, was offered a salary substantially lower than his European colleagues, many of whom were less qualified than him. Prof. Bose was then under the Imperial Education Service (IES). He refused to accept it but nevertheless left no stone unturned in discharging his duties. After…
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…
The year 2012 celebrated the 125 years of five innovators, Henry Moseley, Sukumar Ray, Erwin Schrödinger, Jamini Roy, and Srinivasa Ramanujan. Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley was an English physicist who provided the explanation of X-ray spectra, which justified many concepts in chemistry by sorting the chemical elements of the Periodic Table of the Elements in…
In 1920, Meghnad Saha discovered his ionization formula (Saha Ionization Equation). In 1924, Satyendra Nath Bose found his photon derivation of Planck’s Law (Bose Statistics). In 1928, Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman discovered the Raman Effect. In 1930, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar predicted the Chandrasekhar Limit. Together they contributed to the golden era of Indian physics.
