Review

An article on the Raman Effect appeared in the 22 July 1945 issue of People’s War, the newspaper of the Communist Party of India. Written by DD Kosambi under the pseudonym “An Indian Scientist”, this article is remarkable for several reasons, not least of which is that it is an early example of science journalism in India that mixes the hard science with the human story. That it appeared in a newspaper just as World War II ended, makes it quite unusual as well. There are a number of versions of this article among the Kosambi papers that are available in the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library but let me quote from the printed version:
“Though this group did important work in sound and made a few almost negligible contributions to theory, their work was mainly experimental, with magnetism, and light which is after all, electromagnetic waves. It was important that Calcutta was a great centre of shipping and machine production. Whenever some costly apparatus was required, but no funds were forthcoming, Professor Raman would charter a taxi, prowl through the junk-shops of Calcutta and emerge with ridiculously cheap scraps which were soon rebuilt into what was required. For example, a costly electro-magnet which would have taken six months and several thousand rupees to import was built out of an ancient burnt-out dynamo for less than a hundred rupees all told. Of course, one could not improvise an X- ray tube like this, but the students learned that they had to try on their own rather than wait for someone else to supply the apparatus, or whine about the lack of an ‘atmosphere’ and ‘facilities’.
”The motivation that underlies Rajinder Singh’s slender book (which runs to something like 120 pages with a bibliography of an additional 30 pages) as stated in the preface, is to offer a critical analysis of Raman’s laboratory and funding. It is widely believed – as in Kosambi’s account quoted above - that Raman’s discovery in the late 1920’s cost no more than a few hundred rupees, and that it was possibly an early instance of the much touted Indian jugaad mentality at work. As Rajinder Singh brings out very well, given Raman’s level of ambition, his intellectual sophistication and his acute awareness of the standards of scientific quality of those times, this image is quite far from the truth. To quote again from Kosambi’s article:
“But Raman had made a trip to Europe that year and seen scientists like Ruark looking for the scattering of light by the very small particles of matter which we call atoms. They had failed. […] If so, cried Raman, his brain working with furious rapidity, progressively more complicated molecules must give progressively more complicated satellites. Sixty or more experiments were designed by him in a single week to prove or disprove this idea conclusively; the handful of students and their teacher worked night and day. A new effect was announced in Raman’s own Indian Journal of Physics, beating to the discovery of two Soviet Physicists (Landsberg and Mandelstam) who were checking their own results. India had produced a scientific discovery of the highest class and Raman had again proved that in the world of science it is the man who makes the experiment great, rather than the experiment making the man great.”
There is a lot of primary material that Rajinder Singh has accessed to bring out quite clearly that Raman was indeed well supported by Calcutta University, both in terms of his own salary as well as his laboratory funding. Raman had indeed been abroad several times in the 1920’s, to the US (1924), England (1921, 1924, 1929), Russia (1925), and Europe (1924, 1929, 1930). He knew the leading scientists across the world - indeed, he had the vision to not only start his own journal (now the Indian Journal of Physics) but was also keen to make the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS) some sort of scientific academy.
As Rajinder Singh clearly brings out, there was a lot of equipment already available in Calcutta, either at the IACS or at Calcutta University, and that Raman had a thriving research enterprise. It is astounding to read that in 1923, there were 15 researchers in Raman’s group, 21 in 1924, and by 1927 the number was 36 of whom 23 were full-time research students. Rajinder Singh notes that these students were from all over undivided India except for a few provinces, and that many (but not all) published papers. Indeed, for a single research group to publish something like 49 papers a year (the data is for 1928) would be impressive at any time. There are any number of lessons here for us today!
All in all, though, this is an interesting book that takes a new look at Raman and his milieu. Serious historians of science are always able to reexamine archival material, find new evidence, and make fresh commentaries, as the author states in the preface. There are, however, several shortcomings of the book. It is very poorly produced. The text has not even been proofread carefully. The typesetting is very amateurish, and the photographs that have been included in the book are neither of the highest quality, nor have they been chosen particularly wisely. The fact that the publisher, Shaker Verlag is unlikely to have their books widely distributed in India may be an advantage: I believe it would serve readers of the book if efforts were made to have the book republished locally, but with more care.
Ramakrishna Ramaswamy
School of Physical Sciences
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
and
President, Indian Academy of Sciences, Bengaluru
e-mail: ramaswamy@jnu.ac.in

Review

This is a refreshingly different book about Professor C. V. Raman, Nobel Prize Winner for Physics in the year 1930. It is written by a professional historian of science, working in the University of Oldenburg, Germany. As is appropriate in a scholarly book of this type, almost every one of the numerous statements is given a citation of the source from where the information has been collected. Thus the author is in a good position to separate the myths and the hypes from the day-to-day reality and facts, in so far as they can be taken from the original sources.
It is also clear that the author holds Raman in high esteem, in spite of being aware of his personal foibles like a lack of modesty, a touch of self-projection and a slight intolerance of opposing points of view.

The primary myth that the author wants to debunk is the oft-quoted statement that Raman’s discovery of the Raman
Effect was done with a ridiculously low cost equipment and a pittance of money support. This occupies about half
the book. Very unfortunately we do not have any museum room with the items of the original equipment used by Raman with perhaps wax figures of the persons involved. One can only lament with the author that ‘Indian men of science and technology are oblivious in preserving their heritage, in particular, in the field of science and scientific instruments’. So from the original sources the author has collected the information about the cost of the equipment and facilities available to Raman during that period. The data clearly show that the IACS laboratory was perhaps the best research institution in India at that time and possibly as good as the laboratories of the medium level universities abroad, though clearly a notch below the top level institutions.
There were excellent technicians capable of fabricating intricate and delicate pieces of apparatus as well as the resources to import modest items of equipment from abroad. There were many dedicated research scholars. The cost of the equipment used to study the light scattering was clearly not a few hundred rupees, but more like a few thousand rupees.

Viewed in the context of the situation in 1928 this was not a miserably small amount of money. This is not to belittle Raman’s work, after all the accolade of the Nobel Prize is a fitting tribute to the quality of the achievement, but more to
avoid the pitfall that if poor support is given to scientists they will work hard and do great work. Often the science managers have a tendency to quote the famous statement ‘when you have no money and power, you begin to think!’.
Unfortunately experimental work requires adequate infrastructure support and this costs money. The author could have further highlighted the situation by pointing out that, while the first experiment is usually a herculean task, a heroic effort and an astonishing leap of faith, the experiment can be repeated later with much less effort, cost and facilities.
A surprising omission in the book, in this context, is the reference to Raman’s 1930 Physics Nobel Prize talk, which is now available in the open literature.
However it does not give too much of additional information to the present problem. The 7 inch refractor lens to condense the sunlight was used in the earlier studies. Then the spectral analysis, as different from the light intensity measurements, was taken up. Raman states. ‘The quartz mercury lamp was so powerful and convenient a source of monochromatic illumination that, at least in the case of liquids and solids, photographing the spectrum of scattered light was found to present no extraordinary difficulties. The earliest pictures of the phenomenon were in fact taken with a portable quartz spectrograph of the smallest size made by the firm of Hilger.

With a somewhat larger instrument of the same type, Krishnan obtained very satisfactory spectrograms with liquids and with crystals on which measurements of the desired precision could be made, and on which the presence of lines displaced towards the violet was first definitely established.’ It is quite possible that Raman first used a pocket spectrograph to check the scattered light and on seeing additional scattered light decided to analyse the scattering with a conventional Hilger spectrograph. This is quite plausible, given that on the fateful 28 February 1928, K. S. Krishnan came to the laboratory only in the afternoon to find Raman excited about the use of the pocket (portable) spectrograph and then proceeded to analyse the scattered radiation with the Hilger spectrograph. The first reference to a cost of Rs 200 or Rs 400 for the discovery appears only in 1948, twenty years after the discovery.
Subsequently the same has been repeated by many others, without a careful search of the literature and the situation as of 1928 in the IACS laboratory. In experimental work, a preliminary indication is taken as a very valuable guide, but only a proper verification of the result is taken as the ‘observation’. In Raman’s case the proper verification was only with the regular Hilger spectrograph. In this context one may even recall Pasteur’s famous advice that inspiration comes to the mind prepared to seize the importance of the idea and develop all the impacts and consequences. Even if Raman’s effort on the 28 February 1928 did not cost much, the preparation of the mind to seize the importance of the observation must be counted in the cost of the discovery.
The next one fourth of the book is devoted to the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science with Raman at the helm. The efforts to make it a vibrant research center are described at length.
Good workshop facilities, bright and hard-working research scholars as well as the import of a few instruments and chemicals made IACS the premier research centre in physics in India during this period, though Raman had an ambition to take it to international levels. Again almost every statement is made with a citation of the source from which
it is taken, leaving no doubt about the veracity of the remarks.

The last quarter of the book discusses the situation of Raman with reference to the Calcutta University and IACS. It must be a revelation to many that to the very end there was a very friendly atmosphere of mutual respect and support.
Raman even espoused the use of Bengali language to teach youngsters, taken up vigorously later by people like S. N. Bose and others. In spite of the financial difficulties, Raman was supported to the extent possible and Raman reciprocated by crediting the University and IACS for the success achieved. Alas, Raman’s outbursts on other workers, without realizing the deep hurt such remarks create, slowly made a group of people to be unfriendly. Raman’s salary in 1928 was Rs 1000 p.m. and this was sought to be made Rs 1500 p.m. after the award of the Nobel Prize in 1930. There was a bitter and acrimonious debate with personal tirades in the Senate of the University and only the intervention by the Vice Chancellor enabled the salary increase.
At about the same time there were feelers to attract Raman to the Directorship of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, as the first Indian to be the Director. The challenge of Bangalore was tempting and tantalizing. The author
clearly does not want to spend much time on this unhappy last years in Calcutta and merely quotes Raman’s student, Sukumar Chandra Sirkar, ‘Professor Raman was given an increment of Rs 500 per month after the award of the Nobel Prize and he was drawing altogether Rs 1500 per month at that time. The salary offered to him in Bangalore was about double this amount. He told me that he would take one year’s leave without pay and during this period the work in the Association would be continued undisturbed’. Raman moved to Bangalore in 1932 and such was his unquestionable greatness that within a year he produced another world class gem from Bangalore, namely the Raman–Nath theory of diffraction of light by ultrasonic waves which explained at one stroke the bewildering changes of the intensity of the light diffracted when the ultrasonic intensity is varied and which has become the corner stone of the modern acoustooptic modulator instruments.

What else can one want? Another historian to tell about Raman’s life before 1920s. The facilities of IACS and the Calcutta University were far below par and yet Raman managed to accomplish world class work in acoustics, specially the music of violin and drum (mrudangam). The article in Handbuch der Physik and the election to the Fellowship of the Royal Society were largely due to the pioneering work in musical acoustics. Recall that in 1924, the year he became an FRS, his light scattering work was not yet of the first quality.
History is replete with numerous examples of poets, musicians, and scholars who were living in abject poverty and yet produced work which are remembered even today as world class standing the test of time. This is a tribute to their genius.

It would be terribly wrong to deduce that poverty is a necessary condition to produce pioneering work. Ramanujan
was a mathematical genius. It would be a blunder to conclude that everyone who fails in the college examinations would become a great mathematician. Raman’s story is similar. The conclusion to be drawn is merely that in a laboratory whose facilities were nowhere comparable to those in the top institutions elsewhere in Europe and USA at that time, a fine piece of research was produced. It is definitely not to indicate that substandard facilities in Indian institutions would somehow produce magical wonders.

E. S. RAJAGOPAL

Review

New book explodes myth about cost of instruments used by Sir C V Raman

The book provides full account of how Raman and his students created and perpetuated myth that Raman Effect was discovered by spending just 200 to 500 Indian Rupees.

It is a part of folklore about Indian science that Sir C V Raman made his Nobel-prize winning discovery in 1928 using instruments which cost just a few hundred rupees. A new book by a science historian has busted this myth. Dr Rajinder Singh, a well-known historian of science, in his new book titled C V Raman´s Laboratory and Discovery of the Raman Effect, has brought to light certain hidden aspects of the Nobel laureate´s life and work. This is Singh’s third book on Raman. The book provides full account of how Raman and his students created and perpetuated myth that Raman Effect was discovered by spending just 200 to 500 Indian Rupees. The myth was floated and publicised in national newspapers (The Bharat Joyti, National Herald, Indian News Chronicle) in 1940s and in the memoirs written by Raman´s students. It was projected that the facilities available at the Indian Association for Cultivation of Science (IACS), Calcutta, where Raman did his experimental work, were poor. In newspaper interviews Raman himself spoke about poor facilities available for Indian scientists.

The cost of equipment used by Raman, as mentioned in newspaper articles, ranged between Rs 200 and Rs 500. Raman’s biographer and one of his former students, A. Jayaraman,wrote that “the equipment which Raman employed for the discovery was very simple and amounted to a total cost of 500 Rupees at the time.” The new book provides adetailed list of instruments used by Raman with their cost. Their total cost has been worked out to be Rupees 7630, excluding money spent on chemicals, which cost a handsome amount those days. It details the circumstances and instruments used during discovery of Raman Effect step by step on the basis of the diary of his co-scientist KS Krishnan from February 16, 1928 onwards. The chapter is a compendium of instruments such as mercury lamps, light filters, spectroscopes and other accessories required for Raman´s investigations leading to his discovery and the Nobel Prize.

Raman started his research activity in 1907 at IACS and it included areas as diverse as acoustics, optics, X-rays, and crystallography. His research team included the best talent available in India, as shown in the book. The library of IACS subscribed to 100 popular scientific journals from Europe. Thus the research facilities were not only adequate but almost ´unlimited´, according to the author. It was Raman´s dream to make IACS an international centre of research in India.

“Raman had a huge team of 36 trained researchers; well-equipped laboratories and workshops, and his own journal. Thus under these circumstances, it is wrong to tell that Raman worked under ´poor´ conditions,” the book has pointed out. In the chapter titled “Instruments for the Discovery of Raman Effect”, Singh laments that "as far as India is concerned, the history of scientific instruments is relatively unknown. Even the instruments ´made´ or bought by renowned physicists like CV Raman, MN Saha and SN Bose have not been properly preserved". The book points out that Raman was in the habit of complaining about poor conditions, especially after his visits to European laboratories. In a letter written to the Registrar of Calcutta University, he boasted: “From the experience I have gained in travelling in different parts of the world and visiting the great centres where experimental research in physics is carried on, I can assert without hesitation that the facilities available to the Palit Professor of Physics for the carrying on his duties at the College of Science are miserable in the extreme.”

Besides the instruments used by Raman, the book provides an account of Raman´s general activities as a faculty member, his opponents at the University of Calcutta and the international honours received by him as Palit Professor.

Asutosh Mookerjee, an educationist and judge who later became Vice Chancellor of Calcutta University, was a staunch supporter of the scientist. Raman was made Palit Professor of Physics even when he had no foreign research degree equivalent to D.Sc and that too on his own terms and conditions against the rules of the University. However, Raman proved his worth by winning a Nobel Prize in 1930.

Raman was provided "Ghose Travelling Fellowship" under which he could visit most of the research laboratories in Europe, USA and Canada. He wrote a proposal for expanding his research activities after such visits which was rejected by the university. He wanted to change rules for Ph.D. registrationbut the University Senate did not approve the idea. Raman fully participated in university administration and accepted assignments in various academic bodies of the university. He preferred Bengali as medium of instruction over Sanskrit. The most interesting section in the book talks about Raman´s so-called opponents at the university. In one instance, Raman annoyed JC Bose by offering higher salary to his trustworthy mechanic to uproot him from the Bose Institute. Raman was highly critical of research work of JC Bose and did not spare a moment to criticise him even after his death. The other scientists of the Calcutta School who did not see eye to eye with Raman were MN Saha, BS Guha, UN Brahmachari and Ganesh Prasad. The author has revealed his acumen to bring to light the reasons for the conflict between the dons of Calcutta University and Raman.

Ultimately, all opposition to Raman fizzled out after he got international honours as Palit Professor. He was conferred the Fellowship of Royal Society London, Knighthood of British Empire, and the highest award in Physics, the Nobel Prize. I want to finish my review with brilliant but somewhat sarcastic remarks of Arnab Ray Choudhury: "Raman as a scientist possessed many extraordinary qualities - brilliance of mind, astute intuition, dogged determination, tenacity, an almost unbelievable capacity for hard work - certainly modesty was not one of his qualities".

(India Science Wire)

Review

The common things that pop into our minds when we hear ‘Raman’ are ‘Raman spectroscopy’, ‘atomic dynamics’, ‘local structure’, etc. Very seldom do we think about the person, the brilliant Indian scientist Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, who discovered and reported for the first time the phenomenon of inelastic light scattering by atomic vibrations, subsequently named after him. This book would be of interest for everyone who would like to learn about the discovery of the Raman effect. However, to a certain extent, this is an unusual biography. Scientists or students who know only a little about C.V. Raman might be slightly disappointed, because the book is more about C.V. Raman as a politician than as a person and scientist; it is more about the political atmosphere at the University of Calcutta at that time than about the research activities in the group of C.V. Raman that led to the observation of a new type of secondary radiation which is nowadays routinely applied in modern materials science. On the other hand, readers who are more or less familiar with the biography of C.V. Raman will appreciate this atypical approach in telling the story of this epochal breakthrough in physics, which was the missing experimental proof everyone was looking for, to boost the modern conception of the nature of light. Actually, this was the goal of the author, Dr Rajinder Singh, namely to present facts ‘from the kitchen’, which are not so popular among the canonical admirers of C.V. Raman. For example, it is curious to see that in a biography of Raman, it is emphasized that there were several quite incorrect statements in the original paper [C. V. Raman & K. S. Krishnan (1928). Nature, 121, 501–502]. The frank presentation of the facts by Dr Singh does not belittle the efforts and the genius of C.V. Raman; on the contrary, it demonstrates the insight of C.V. Raman in immediately recognising that the search for inelastic visible-light scattering had finally been successful, and his courage in publishing the results as soon as possible in order to make the new findings available for the scientific community worldwide. The book provides technical details about the instruments used to discover the Raman effect as well as about the funds available for research at the University of Calcutta. Furthermore, this short monograph can be considered as a nice overview of the history of Indian physical science in that amazing era of the revolutionary development of modern physics, which should be of interest for an international readership.

Review

Rajinder Singh is a well-established Historian of Science who started his journey in this field by working on his Ph.D. thesis: “Nobel Laureate CV Raman’s work on Light Scattering”. He is an accomplished historian of science with more than 100 research papers and twenty books already to his credit. This book is 3rd in series on CV Raman and exposes to public eye certain hidden aspects of Indian Nobel Laureate´s life and work.

The book consists of four Chapters which are preceded by Preface, Acknowledgements, Dedication, Foreword, and half a dozen Expert´s opinions about the author and this book. In his Foreword, Arnab Rai Choudhury has critically examined the contents of the book and minces no words in projecting CV Raman and the author. He writes: ´ As a Bengali, I am pleased that Rajinder has collected new data from the records of Calcutta University on a subject which is often represented very wrongly on the basis of nothing more than unsubstantiated gossip: Raman´s relation with the Bengali academic world".

In his introduction (Chapter 1), Rajinder gives a photograph of the Spectroscope used by Raman for the discovery of the Raman Effect. He writes succinctly: "One might blame M.N. Saha for throwing away Raman´s instruments, while shifting the IACS from Bowbazzar to Jadavpur. This suggests that Indian men of science and technology are oblivious of preserving their heritage". The author further recalls: " Raman had a huge team of trained researchers; well equipped laboratories and workshops, and his own journal. Thus under these circumstances, it is wrong to tell that Raman worked under a ´poor´ condition".

Chapter 2 is titled "Instruments for the Discovery of Raman Effect" and forms the core of this book. The author laments: "As far as India is concerned, the history of scientific instruments is relatively unknown. Even the instruments ´made´ or bought by renowned physicists like CV Raman, MN Saha and SN Bose have not been properly preserved". The author delineates the circumstances and instruments used during discovery of Raman effect step by step on the basis of KS Krishnan´s diary from Feb. 16 onwards. In fact, this Chapter is a compendium of instruments, for example, mercury lamps, light filters, spectroscopes and other accessories required for Raman´s investigations leading to his discovery and Nobel Prize.

Chapter 3 is focussed on the research facilities provided to CV Raman at the Indian Association for Cultivation of Science (IACS), Calcutta. The myth of poor facilities at IACS and winning Nobel Prize by spending merely Rs. 400 on his equipment is exploded by the author in this Chapter. The total cost of his instruments works out to be Rs. 7630, excluding the price of Chemicals, which was a handsome amount those days. CV Raman started his research activity in 1907 at IACS and it included areas as diverse as acoustics, optics, X-rays, and Crystallography. His research team included the best talent available in India as shown in Tables 4-8 included in this Chapter. The library of IACS subscribed to 30 popular Science Journals of Europe. Thus the research facilities were not only adequate but almost ´unlimited´ according to the author. It was Raman´s dream to make IACS an International Centre of research in India.

According to the author, Chapter 4 is intended to fill the gap in the information available about CV Raman in the following areas: 1. Facilities given to Raman as Palit Professor. 2. Raman´s general activities as a faculty member. 3. Raman´s ´opponents´ at the University of Calcutta. 4. Three international honours received by Raman as Palit Professor. Asutosh Mookerjee, the educationist and Judge, who became Vice Chancellor of Calcutta University later on, was a staunch supporter of CV Raman. Raman was made Palit Professor of Physics even when he had no foreign research degree equivalent to D.Sc, and that to on his own terms and conditions against the rules of University. However, Raman proved his worth by winning a Nobel Prize in 1930.

Raman was provided "Ghose Travelling Fellowship" under which he could visit most of the research laboratories in Europe, USA and Canada. He wrote a proposal for expanding his research activities after this visit which was rejected by the University. He wanted to change rules for Ph.D. registration but the University Senate did not approve of it. Raman fully participated in University administration and accepted assignments in various academic bodies of the University. He preferred Bengali as medium of instruction over Sanskrit.

The most interesting section of this Chapter deals with the topic: "Raman´s ´opponents´ at the University". He annoyed JC Bose by offering higher salary to his mechanic and thus uprooting him from Bose Institute. Raman was highly critical of research work of JC Bose and did not spare a moment to criticise him even after his death. The other scientists of Calcutta School who did not see eye to eye with Raman were MN Saha, BS Guha, UN Brahmachari and Ganesh Prasad. The author has revealed his acumen to bring to light the reasons for the conflict of interest between dons of Calcutta University and Raman.

Ultimately, all opposition to Raman fizzled out after he got International honours as Palit Professor. He was conferred the Fellowship of Royal Society London, Knighthood of British Empire, and the highest award in Physics, the Nobel Prize. I want to finish my review with the brilliant but somewhat sarcastic remarks of Arnab Ray Choudhury: "Raman as a scientist possessed many extraordinary qualities - brilliance of mind, astute intuition, dogged determination, tenacity, an almost unbelievable capacity for hard work - certainly modesty was not one of his qualities".

I recommend this book for researchers, scientists and historians of science and culture. The author has took pains to give an exhaustive list of Notes and References to supplement the Bibliography. Rajinder deserves all praise for this monumental work pertaining to the Raman era of Indian History of Science.