Google Doodle today
celebrates the birth anniversary of eminent Kathak dancer Sitara Devi. Born on
November 8, 1920, Sitara Devi has been described as Nritya Samragini by
Rabindranath Tagore when she was just 16 years old. Born in Kolkata, Sitara
Devi's family was originally from Varanasi. Sitara Devi's father Sukhdev
Maharaj was also a Kathak dancer and a scholar of Sanskrit. Sitara Devi's
mother Matsya Kumar was related to the royal family of Nepal. Over the years, Sitara Devi performed all
over India and abroad, including prestigious venues like Royal Albert Hall,
London (1967) and the Carnegie Hall, New York (1976).
The success in Sitara
Devi's professional life did not reflect in her personal life. Sitara Devi was
married twice and both marriages ended bitterly, leaving her wedded to her
first passion, dance. Some of Sitara
Devi's famous students were Madhubala, Rekha, Mala Sinha and even Kajol among
many more. Sitara Devi desired to set up a Kathak dance academy in Mumbai, but
got no land from the government. However, in 2002 when Sitara Devi was awarded
the Padma Bhushan she turned it down saying "it is my insult and not an
honour". News agency PTI quoted Sitara Devi as saying, "I will not
accept any award less than Bharat Ratna."
Sitara Devi passed away on November 25, 2014.
Yesterday 7th Nov … was a great day, the
Nation should have remembered and celebrated and I was waiting to see a doodle
at least as Google did in 2013.
Yesterday there was much
ado about a past primetime actor asking his fans to contribute crores to make a
political party and some had time to relate the birthday of the heroine of
Bahubali, turning out to be one of the
highest-grossing films ever because of its phenomenal collection at the box
office and on her personal life .. .. ..
but ! ~ this is what went missing ..
In the history of science,
we often find that the study of some natural phenomenon has been the
starting-point in the development of a new branch of knowledge. Years
ago, occurred an instance of this – in the ofrm of colour of skylight, which
later was to inspire numerous optical investigations. In the words
of its creator ~ “Even more striking, though not so familiar to all, is the
colour exhibited by oceanic waters. A voyage to Europe in the summer of 1921
gave me the first opportunity of observing the wonderful blue opalescence of
the Mediterranean Sea. It seemed not unlikely that the phenomenon owed its
origin to the scattering of sunlight by the molecules of the water.”
That path-breaking invention
which was to honour and make him a Nobel Laureate – the invention itself came
to be known after him ~ it was the inelastic scattering of a photon. When
photons are scattered from an atom or molecule, most photons are elastically
scattered, such that the scattered photons have the same energy (frequency and
wavelength) as the incident photons.
Here is an extract of the
Presentation Speech by Professor H. Pleijel, Chairman of the Nobel Committee
for Physics of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, on
December 10, 1930……. The Academy of Sciences, has resolved to
award the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1930 to Sir ____________________for his
work on the scattering of light and for the discovery of the effect named after
him.
The diffusion of light is an
optical phenomenon, which has been known for a long time. A ray of light is not
perceptible unless it strikes the eye directly. If, however, a bundle of rays
of light traverses a medium in which extremely fine dust is present, the ray of
light will scatter to the sides and the path of the ray through the medium will
be discernible from the side. We can represent the course of events in this
way; the small particles of dust begin to oscillate owing to electric influence
from the ray of light, and they form centres from which light is disseminated
in all directions. The wavelength, or the number of oscillations per second, in
the light thus diffused is here the same as in the original ray of light. But
this effect has different degrees of strength for light with different
wavelengths. It is stronger for the short wavelengths than for the long ones,
and consequently it is stronger for the blue part of the spectrum than for the
red part. Hence if a ray of light containing all the colours of the spectrum
passes through a medium, the yellow and the red rays will pass through the
medium without appreciable scattering, whereas the blue rays will be scattered
to the sides.
<http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1930/press.html>
Sure no more clues and a
brilliant google doodle today to honour our own Sir CV Raman.
Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata
Raman, FRS was born on 7th Nov
1888 and lived till 21st Nov 1970. The great
Indian physicist’s work was influential in the growth of science
in India. He was the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1930 for
the discovery that when light traverses a transparent material, some of the
deflected light changes in wavelength. This phenomenon is now called Raman
scattering and is the result of the Raman effect.
Venkata Raman was born in
Thiruvanaikkaval, Trichinopoly [nearer Thiruvarangam – at Trichi].
His parents were R. Chandrasekhara Iyer and Parvati Ammal. He was the second of
their five children. At an early age, Raman moved to the city
of Visakhapatnam. His father was a lecturer in mathematics and physics
at Presidency College in Madras, which Raman entered in
1902 at the age of 13. In 1904 he passed his B.A. examination in first place
and won the gold medal in physics, and in 1907 he gained his M.A. degree with
the highest distinctions. In 1917, Raman resigned from his government service
after he was appointed the first Palit Professor of Physics at
the University of Calcutta. At the same time, he continued doing
research at the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science
(IACS),Calcutta, where he became the Honorary Secretary. Raman used to refer to
this period as the golden era of his career.
On 28 February 1928, Raman
led experiments at the IACS with collaborators, including K. S. Krishnan, on
the scattering of light, when he discovered the Raman effect. Mr K. S. Krishan,
surprisingly did not share the award, but is mentioned prominently even in the
Nobel lecture.
Raman was president of the
16th session of the Indian Science Congress in 1929. He was conferred a
knighthood, and medals and honorary doctorates by various universities. It is
stated that Raman was confident of winning the Nobel Prize in Physics as well,
but was disappointed when the Nobel Prize went to Richardson in 1928
and tode Broglie in 1929. He was so confident of winning the prize in 1930 that
he booked tickets in July, even though the awards were to be announced in
November, and would scan each day's newspaper for announcement of the prize,
tossing it away if it did not carry the news. He did eventually win the 1930
Nobel Prize in Physics "for his work on the scattering of light and for
the discovery of the Raman effect". He was the first Asian to receive any
Nobel Prize in the sciences. Before him Rabindranath Tagore (also Indian) had
received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. In 1941 he was awarded the
Franklin Medal. In 1954 he was awarded the Bharat Ratna.[
He also started a company
called Travancore Chemical and Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (now known as TCM
Limited) which manufactured Pottasium chlorate for the match industry. The
Company subsequently established four factories in Southern India. In
1947, he was appointed as the first National Professor by the new government of
Independent India.
He died in 1970,
in Bangalore, at the age of 82. Sir Raman was the paternal uncle of
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who later won the Nobel Prize in Physics (1983) for
his discovery of the Chandrasekhar limit in 1931 and for his subsequent work on
the nuclear reactions necessary for stellar evolution.
India celebrates
National Science Day on 28 February of every year to commemorate the discovery
of the Raman effect in 1928. Google celebrated his 125th birth day
in 2013 with a special doodle.
With regards – S.
Sampathkumar
8th Nov. 2017
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