An Example of Punctuality, Obedience, and Sincerity: C V Raman
An Example of Punctuality, Obedience, and sincerity: C V Raman
Why did Sir C V Raman throw Nehru’s bust on the floor and smashed the Bharat Ratna given to him by the Nehru government?
He was the first Asian to have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physical Science.
C V Raman was a man of exceptional intelligence, ethics, and principles. He lived a life of dignity and contributed his entire service to Nation. He was a man who dreamt of seeing India as a world leader in science and research.
With limited resources and accessibility, he achieved something which changed the belief of many scientists in the world. CV Raman had two lives, one as a common financial bureaucratic who was working for the government to earn his livelihood and the other of a mysterious man.
This mysterious man would disappear exactly at 5 PM in the evening after office hours and then would return back home at 10 PM in the night. Similarly, he would again disappear by 5 AM in the morning and be back at 9.45 AM to his office.
No one ever knew what exactly was going on in Raman’s mind or what was he doing. His strange schedule followed for nearly 10 years from 1907 to 1917.
It was only later it was discovered this young man was working in an organization founded by Mahendra Lal Sircar, ‘Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science’ (IACS).
Raman spent most of his time after office in this lab working on his most interesting subject Physics. Raman who was fond of music and string instruments had many doubts about string theory and the sounds that resonate with them. his curiosity made him create certain string instruments similar to the ones used in Carnatic music.
Raman was very amused with Violin and its operation. His study and experiments ultimately became a book named On the Mechanical Theory of Vibrations of Musical Instruments of the Violin Family with Experimental Verification of the Results.
In his study of Violin, he was able to describe the relationship between the frequency response and the quality of the violin. This experiment of his became famous as the Frequency response Curve which is plotted with Frequency in the X-axis and pressure in the Y-axis.
His ideas were related to understanding simple things and trying to establish their relationship with humans. He believed that Science was ‘entirely and essentially a human phenomenon that cannot be separated. Later, he changed his study from music to optics, and one of the greatest findings in history was about to be unveiled.
Raman later took a teaching job as a professor in Calcutta. Watching his exceptional work, he was offered the Palit Chair in the Physics department which needed a massive revamp.
He took up the job despite getting 50% less salary and transformed the entire department. But he faced huge hindrances to work in Indian labs as they lacked minimum facilities and many of his experiments need advanced instruments for analysis.
He had once requested a businessman for a spectrophotometer to be bought to his lab for which the businessman had asked what would I get if I get you a Spectrophotometer. Raman had then said, get me a spectrophotometer and I will get you Nobel Prize. As said, finally in 1930, CV Raman was awarded the Nobel prize for his work on The Raman effect.
In 1932, IISC, Bangalore was then looking for a new Director and had approached Lord Rutherford for the post. Rutherford had then replied saying “Why approach me when you have Raman”!
Finally, when Raman started his journey in IISC, the departments seemed puppets under the government hands which had bothered Raman big way. His punctuality, his obedience, and sincerity at work were something the lethargic lobby did not like.
He started a new department of Physics and granted some amount to get the work going. He discovered that a lot of funds received from the government were being wasted and misused by many people and took stringent action against them.
An Example of Punctuality, Obedience, and Sincerity: C V Raman
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