Sudesh - Physics

Happy birthday , the forgotten woman of nuclear physics - - -

Meitner excelled in mathematics and science from an early age. In 1905, she became only the second woman to gain a doctorate at the University of Vienna. Shortly afterwards she moved to Berlin, where she became assistant to the famous quantum physicist .

(the physical process by which very large atoms like uranium split into pairs of smaller atoms) is what makes nuclear bombs and nuclear power plants possible. But for many years, scientists believed it energetically impossible for atoms as large as uranium (atomic mass = 235 or 238) to be split into two. That all changed on February 11, 1939, with a letter to the editor of (a premier international scientific journal) that described exactly how such a thing could occur and even named it fission. In that letter, physicist Lise Meitner, with the assistance of her young nephew , provided a physical explanation of how nuclear fission could happen.

It was a massive leap forward in nuclear physics, but today Lise Meitner remains obscure and largely forgotten. She received many awards and honours late in her life, but she did not share the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for nuclear fission, which was awarded exclusively to her long-time collaborator . Several scientists and journalists have called her exclusion "unjust". According to the Nobel Prize archive, she was nominated 19 times for Nobel Prize in Chemistry between 1924 and 1948, and 29 times for Nobel Prize in Physics between 1937 and 1965. Despite not having been awarded the Nobel Prize, Meitner was invited to attend the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in 1962. However, Meitner received many other honours.

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Today is November 07. Let me introduce you to an Indian man who made the ground-breaking discovery of the phenomenon of change of wavelength of light when a beam is scattered in a medium. He is our first "scientist of the day" today. (Today we have two articles)

It's the birthday of "Bharat Ratna" Sir , the first Asian to receive a in any branches of science - - -

(Scientist of the Day - 07 November)

Born to Tamil Brahmin parents, Raman was a precocious child, completing his secondary and higher secondary education at the age of 11 and 13, respectively. He topped the bachelor's degree examination of the University of Madras with honours in physics at age 16. His first research paper, on diffraction of light, was published in 1906 while he was still a graduate student. The next year he obtained a master's degree. In 1917, he was appointed the first Palit Professor of Physics at the Rajabazar Science College under the University of Calcutta.

Let's understand his most famous work :-

When light meets particles that are smaller than the light's , the light spreads in different directions. This occurs, for example, when light packets - - encounter molecules in a gas. In 1928, Raman (with his student K. S. ) discovered that a small portion of the light acquires other wavelengths than that of the original light. This is because some of the incoming photons' energy can be transferred to a molecule, giving it a higher level of energy. Among other things, the phenomenon is used to analyze different types of material.

He won the 1930 Nobel Prize in Physics for this work on the scattering of light (known as Raman effect or Raman Scattering). Raman was honoured with a large number of honorary doctorates and memberships of scientific societies :
- Knight Bachelor (1929)
- Hughes Medal (1930)
- Bharat Ratna (1954)
- Lenin Peace Prize (1957)
- Fellow of the Royal Society.

He founded the Indian Journal of Physics in 1926. In 1933, he became the first Indian director of the Indian Institute of Science. He founded the Indian Academy of Sciences the same year. He established the Raman Research Institute in 1948 where he worked to his last days.

The Raman effect was discovered on 28 February 1928. The day is celebrated annually by the Government of India as the National Science Day.

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