Milestone-Nomination:RAMAN EFFECT

Docket Number: 2009-04

Proposal Link: https://ethw.org/Milestone-Proposal:RAMAN_EFFECT

RAMAN EFFECT

RAMAN EFFECT 1928
Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, Nobel-laureate (Physics-1930), assisted by K S Krishnan at IACS, Calcutta, India, discovered on 28 February 1928, that when a beam of coloured light entered a liquid, a fraction of light scattered was of a different colour, dependent on material property. This radiation effect of molecular scattering of light bears his name as the ‘Raman Effect’, from which many applications in photonic communications and spectroscopy evolved.




Please also include references and full citations, and include supporting material in an electronic format (GIF, JPEG, PNG, PDF, DOC) which can be made available on the IEEE History Center’s Web site to historians, scholars, students, and interested members of the public. All supporting materials must be in English, or if not in English, accompanied by an English translation. If you are including images or photographs as part of the supporting material, it is necessary that you list the copyright owner.

Raman_c-web.jpg‎ (250 × 319 pixel, file size: 14 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg)
Docket No 2009-04 C V Raman Photograph

Fig 1. C. V. Raman Courtesy Emilio Segré Visual Archives/AIP [12] 

References:
1) C. V. Raman, Molecular Diffraction of Light, University of Calcutta, 1922
2) C. V. Raman and K. S. Krishnan, Nature, 121, (1928) 501-502
3) C. V. Raman, Nature, 121, (1928) 619
4) C. V. Raman and K. S. Krishnan, Nature, 121, (1928) 711
5) C. V. Raman, Indian J. Phys. , 2, (1928) 387-398
6) A. S. Ganesan, Indian J. Phys., 4, (1929-30) 281-348
7) S. Bhagavantam, Indian J. Phys., 5, (1930) 236-307
8) C. V. Raman and K. S. Krishnan, Indian J. Phys., 2, (1928) 399-419
9) C. V. Raman and K. S. Krishnan, Proc. Roy. Soc. Lond., A 122, (1929) 23-35
10) K. W. F. Kohlrausch, Der Smekel-Raman Effekt, Verlag von Julius Springer, Berlin, 1931
11) Nobel Lectures in Physics, 1922-1941, Elsevier Publishing Company; New York, (1965), 263-277
12)C. V. Raman photo, Courtesy Emilio Segré Visual Archives/AIP
http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200902/physicshistory.cfm

In the space below the line, please describe the historic significance of this work: its importance to the evolution of electrical and computer engineering and science and its importance to regional/national/international development.

Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman discovered in February 28, 1928, that when a beam of coloured light entered a liquid, a fraction of light scattered was of a different colour, dependent on material property. This radiation effect of molecular scattering of light bears his name as ‘Raman Effect’, for which he was awarded Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930. In his 1930 Nobel lecture [11] he remarked “… the character of the scattered radiation enable us to obtain an insight into the ultimate structure of the scattering substance….the new field of spectroscopy has unrestricted scope in the problems, relating to structure of matter. We may also hope that it will lead us to a further understanding of the nature of light and interaction between light and matter”. The Raman Effect is a major piece of evidence in favor of the quantum theory. The universality of phenomenon and the advent of laser have made Raman spectroscopy the basic tool in most branches of science and medicine.

What features or characteristics set this work apart from similar achievements?

Sir C. V. Raman was a remarkable personality in science. His sixty seven years of scientific life was filled to the brim of which twenty six years he worked at Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS), Calcutta - the golden era described by Professor Raman. During the period he not only did pioneering work in the different branches of Physics including the well-known scattering of light but also he was the founder of a school of Physics by attracting a band of devoted and brilliant workers from different parts of the country. Professor Raman was awarded the coveted Nobel Prize for the effect named after him [1-10] in 1930. Working at IACS he discovered that when a beam of coloured light entered a liquid, a fraction of the light scattered by that liquid was of different colour. He then showed that the nature of the coloured scattered light was dependent on the type of the sample present. In his 1930 Nobel lecture [11] he remarked “… the character of the scattered radiation enable us to obtain an insight into the ultimate structure of the scattering substance….the new field of spectroscopy has unrestricted scope in the problems, relating to structure of matter. We may also hope that it will lead us to a further understanding of the nature of light and interaction between light and matter”. The Raman Effect is a major piece of evidence in favor of the quantum theory. The universality of phenomenon and the advent of laser have made Raman spectroscopy the basic tool in most branches of science and medicine. The Raman Effect is a fundamental nonlinear phenomenon of interest in engineering, nonlinear physics, and applied mathematics, and it may lead to important practical applications as well as to the progress of fundamental nonlinear science. The applications of Raman technologies may be mentioned; such as frequency conversion, the design and development of novel approaches, like the implementation of long distance quasi-lossless transmission schemes, fundamental aspects of nonlinear optics, the interaction of the Raman effect with parametric processes like Four-wave mixing, and how this can be controlled to increase the efficiency of super-continuum radiation generation. The possibility of shifting energy from one frequency to another using the inherent properties of the material is a very attractive one, and in the field of optical communications it finds its most immediate application in the development of Raman amplifiers.

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Media:2009-04 Milestone-Nomination CONSENT LETTER- RAMAN EFFECT.doc

Raman c-web.jpg

2009-04 Milestone-Nomination CONSENT LETTER- RAMAN EFFECT.doc