It was in 1986 that the National Council for Science and Technology Communication (NCSTC) recommended the Government of India to celebrate February 28 as National Science Day (NSD) every year. It was on February 28, 1928, that Prof CV Raman discovered the Raman Effect which fetched him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930. In continuation of NCSTC recommendations, various schools, colleges, universities and research institutions and non-governmental organisations started celebrating NSD every year with financial help from the Department of Science and Technology. The NSD programmes are tailored for school and college students and research institutions so as to make them feel proud of the scientific and technological advancements of India. This will create interest in their mind to take up basic sciences for their academic career, thereby contributing to the nation’s progress. This, in fact, is paying back to the mother country that supports their studies in terms of scholarships and other incentives. Celebration of NSD will create scientific spirit in the minds of the people which will make them support science and technology for global well-being in the spirit of Indian motto, Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam.
Every year, NSD celebration has focal subjects relevant to science and its applications. The focal point for 2024 NSD is Global Science and Global Well- being. It is appropriate to know the life and works of CV Raman leading to the discovery of Raman Effect and its applications in different walks of life, which form the subject matter of the present article and are described in the following sections. It is timely to reread the life and mission of the Indian great scientist as a national hero who spearheaded the Swadeshi Movement in the field of science and technology just like Mahatma Gandhi led Swadeshi Movement in socio-political dynamics. The present article is directed towards this aspect of the scientist’s life, especially when it is highly relevant when India seeks self-reliance in all fields of creative activities.
The open book of nature was read by Prof CV Raman with the mind of a highly observant scientist. Once he remarked, “The face of nature as presented to us is infinitely varied: but to those who love her, it is ever beautiful and interesting. The blue of the sky, the glories of sunrise and sunset, the ever shifting panorama of the clouds, the varied colours of forests and fields, the star sprinkled sky at night —these and many other scenes pass before our eyes on the never ending drama of light and colour which nature presents for our benefits.” Raman liked to describe himself as an admirer of light, colour and beauty.
To have a complete perspective, we outline the life and work of CV Raman in the context of the above cited objective, that will be an inspiration to the present generation of budding scientists. The second half of the 19th century India gave birth to illustrious people like Gandhiji, Jawaharlal Nehru, JC Bose, SN Bose, CV Raman, Srinivasa Ramanujan, Rabindranath Tagore, Swami Vivekananda and Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, among others, who created history in all walks of life. When Homi Bhabha and Vikram Sarabhai returned to India after their training abroad, and approached Raman to work under him, the senior scientist advised them to initiate Atomic Energy and Space Research establishments in India, which would contribute to the development of the nation. Raman’s vision became instrumental in the establishment of two strong pillars of the edifice contributing to the nation’s glory.
Born on November 7, 1888, at Tiruchirappalli as the second of eight children of R Chandrashekhar Iyer and Parvathi Ammal, Chandrashekhar Venkata Raman passed matriculation at the age of 11, FA at 13, BA at 15 and MA at 18, all with the highest rank. By the time he completed MA in 1907 from the Presidency College, Madras, Raman had already authored two research papers in the prestigious Philosophical Magazine, shortening his tongue-twister name to CV Raman. Due to health problems, Raman was denied the opportunity to study abroad. He wrote the competitive examination of the finance department and topped the list. In 1907, he was appointed as the assistant accountant general at Calcutta. Before boarding the train to Calcutta, the 13-year-old Loka Sundari walked into the life of CV Raman. Within a week of shuttling back and forth between home and office in Calcutta, Raman made a remarkable discovery—the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS) at 210, Bowbazar Road of Calcutta. It was a heart-touching scene. On knocking the door of IACS, a young man called Ashutosh Dey appeared in front of Raman—a historical meeting, indeed, since later on, for about 25 years of scientific pursuit, Dey would remain Raman’s right hand.
From 1907 to 1919, Raman studied the acoustic properties of Indian musical instruments. Scientific journals like Nature, Philosophical Magazine, and Physical Review started printing the name of Raman and IACS on a regular basis.
IACS, founded by Dr Mahendralal Sircar in 1876, became world famous. The purity of sound from ektara, acoustic difference between tambura and veena, etc. were the subjects of investigation carried out by Raman. He found their secrets by conducting a series of experiments. Raman and Ashu Babu even constructed a self-working violin using discarded components available in the market.
Under the Vice Chancellor Ashutosh Mookherjee, Calcutta University became the dream world for meritorious students like KR Ramanathan from Trivandrum, KS Krishnan from Madras, Bhagavantham from Andhra Pradesh and more. Many came from the nook and corners of India to accept the discipleship of Raman. Following the death of Amritlal in 1919, Raman became the secretary of IACS.
Raman’s first foreign trip was in 1921 to Oxford, England, to take part in a conference. During his return journey, the deep blue of the Mediterranean Sea tickled Raman’s scientific mind. He found that the blueness of the ocean was not due to reflection of the sky as Rayleigh thought, but due to the scattering of sunlight, which was getting diffused in the ocean waters.
During a reception party, Ashutosh Mookherjee asked, “Professor Raman, what next?” The answer was spontaneous: “Why, of course, the Nobel Prize itself.” Day and night were spent by Raman and his students in the lab from 1924 onwards, which bore fruit with Raman winning the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1930, becoming the first Asian to receive the most prestigious prize in any category of science.
In 1933, the new institute of science and technology founded by the Tata group in Bangalore—which later became the Indian Institute of Science—was looking for a new director and Raman was chosen as the first Indian to head the prestigious institute. Raman molded outstanding physicians in Bangalore such as Nagendranath Pancharatnam, PR Pisharoty, RS Krishnan, and GN Ramachandran, among several others.
In 1934, Raman established the Indian Academy of Sciences in Bangalore. During 1934-54, the Indian Academy Proceedings was considered one of the top research journals in the world, since a majority of Raman’s papers appeared in this journal. After his retirement from the Indian Institute of Science, Raman established a research laboratory in Bangalore, which is now called the Raman Research Institute (RRI), with the help of the Maharajah of Mysore and his own friends. The RRI is in perfect blend with the surrounding trees and bushes and is an important landmark of Bangalore. RRI’s future expansion should be without destroying its rhythm with nature, thus wrote Raman in his will. The scientists who study nature through observations and experiments and the poet who describes the astonishing spectacle enacted in the grand theatre of the universe, are pilgrims progressing along apparently non-intersecting roads, aiming at the realization of truth. CV Raman was on such a pilgrimage.
After 1948, every year Raman used to give the Gandhi Memorial Lecture on October 2 through the AIR. On the 2nd of October of 1970, the country heard the last of the Gandhi Memorial Lecture by Raman. On an evening the next month, Raman fell unconscious in his lab. After two weeks, on November 21, 1970, he got dissolved into the Varnaprapancha—the universe of colour—leaving about 310 varieties of diamonds, gems and stones to the future generations.
It might have been the starting point of a Mahaprasthan—the great journey of a pure soul. Following his wish, the compound of RRI became the resting place of Prof CV Raman—the final resort of the great son of India, sans celebration, sans memorials, sans anything except a lone tree on the green spread, standing upright looking directly above, waiting for the whispering of a mild wind and showering flowers on to the meadow underneath.
RAMAN EFFECT AS AN INTERDISCIPLINARY TOOL
There does not exist any other discovery named after a single individual, applications of which make the horizon of knowledge recede farther and farther. Some of the Raman Effect-based techniques come in acronyms like RE, RS, ARS, SRS, CARS, CSRS, HORSES, SERS, SpRS, StRS, RRM, SERRS, RRS, TERS, SESORS, SORS, FTRS, LTRS HRS, RIKE, NLRS…Almost every month a new acronym appears in scientific literature. The range of fields of applications are still getting enhanced, bringing out new fields of knowledge based on RE.
Raman technology, which covers Raman Spectroscopy (RS) and its various derivative methods, has been widely applied in detection of various substances in agriculture, food and biosystems. Works started pouring in from several parts of the world where RS and SERS are discussed in agriculture, food and biosystems, such as adulteration recognition, plant diseases identification, farm chemicals detection, food additives determination, and toxins analysis.
Food additives are a common issue threatening food safety and quality. For example, dye Sudan-1 in chili powder can be detected by using SERS with good sensitivity, such that Sudan-1 can be quantified in a complex food matrix reliably over the range of 10-3 –10-4 mol/L. A rapid SERS-based method to detect melamine in liquid milk at a detection limit of 0.17 mg/L, detection of Rhodamine B (RB), which is often added illegally to chili powder, the lowest detection limits of 5 mg/ml and 10 mg/g were observed for Methyline blue in fish muscles, respectively.
A practical convolutional neural network model for discriminating Raman spectra of human and animal blood; detection and identification of plant pathogens on maize kernels with a hand-held Raman spectrometer; rapid and sensitive detection of melamine in milk with gold nanoparticles by surface-enhanced Raman scattering; surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy detection of restricted antibiotics; rapid detection of pesticide residue in apple based on Raman spectroscopy studies on the pathological and biomedical characteristics of spinal cord injury by confocal Raman micro spectral imagining; rapid detection of malaria and dengue infected patients using Raman spectroscopy; and determination of butter adulteration with margarine chemical using Raman spectroscopy, are some of the examples where Raman Effect is employed for global wellbeing.
Applications of Raman scattering for tumor detection has been successfully implemented by Dr RS Jayasree, who is the Head of Biophotonics division, SCTIMST, Trivandrum. Dr Jayasree’s group has several patents related to the use of RE in medical applications. Research Group at CSIR lab at Trivandrum with Prof Ajaya Ghosh as the head, developed hand-held Raman Spectrometer, which can be used for different agricultural applications.
To conclude, we saw an overview of the Raman Effect for various interdisciplinary applications in different fields, including medical application. In the coming years, more applications in diverse fields may be made available from dedicated laboratories all over the world.
*The writer is Visiting Scientist, Cochin University of Science and Technology, Kochi. He can be reached at nampoori@gmail.com
