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Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman

Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman (November 7, 1888-November 21, 1970) was an Indian physicist. He was born in Thiruchinapalli, in Tamil Nadu. At an early age Raman moved to the city of Vishakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. He completed his BA and MA in Physics and English from Presidency College, Madras. He joined the Indian Civil Services as an Assistant Accountant General in Calcutta (now Kolkata).

Raman was a professor of Physics at the Calcutta University for the next fifteen years. It was here that his work on optics got recognized.

Raman won the 1930 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the scattering of light and for the discovery of the effect named after him. Raman spectroscopy is named after him for it uses this effect. It was the first time that an Indian scholar who studied wholly in India received the Nobel Prize.

In 1934, Raman became director of the Indian Institute of Sciences, Bangalore. In 1949, he established the Raman Research Institute.

He was knighted in 1929 and awarded the Bharat Ratna in 1954.

CV Raman is the uncle of Nobel Prize Physics winner Dr. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar.

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