The Nobel Prize (whether in Physics, Chemistry, or Medicine) is one of the highest honours a scientist can receive. And yet, only eight Indians have ever claimed that prize, despite there being many nominations over the years. And only four of those were for science.
Har Gobind Khorana won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1968, and Venkatraman Ramakrishnan won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1983. Only CV Raman and Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar have won the Nobel Physics, in 1930 and 1983 respectively. So here are some of the other Indian scientists that have been sadly passed over.
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A renowned polymath, physicist, biologist, biophysicist, botanist and archaeologist, JC Bose is considered the unsung hero behind modern day Wi-Fi technology. Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi is credited with first inventing the telegraph in 1895, but Bose was simultaneously attempting to understand radio waves and their behaviour. He was the first to demonstrate radio communication with millimetre wavelengths, between the 30GHz to 300GHz spectrum. Those millimetre waves now form the backbone of 5G technology.?
Aside from that, his research has contributed to radar, radio space telescopes, collision warning systems, and more. He also never made a penny off his work, instead giving it away for free so others could build on his progress. And Marconi himself later acknowledged the significance of Bose's work in his writing, after they met in 1896.
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SN Bose was a theoretical physicist, best known for his work on quantum mechanics in the early 1920s. He was also a student of JC Bose while completing his MSc at Calcutta University. Most importantly, he provided the foundation for the Bose-Einstein statistics and the Bose-Einstein condensate theory. Though he never secured a Nobel Prize either, though he was nominated for it, he acquired honour anyway, with the subatomic particles we now know as bosons being named after him.
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GN Ramachandran was studying electrical engineering at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore back in 1942, when his research potential was spotted by none other than Nobel Physics Prize winner CV Raman. It was because of him that Ramachandran was transferred to Physics.?
He is credited with using X-ray differentiation techniques to first uncover the triple helix structure of collagen, which is the most abundant protein in connective tissue. It's considered a seminal work of molecular bio-physics, right up there with the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA.
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ECG Sudarshan has been nominated for a Nobel Prize several times but has always missed out. The first time was back in 1957, when he developed something called V-A theory of weak interaction with Robert Marshaks. However, the two had the publishing of their research delayed by a few days, and in the meanwhile a different duo coincidentally working on the same concept published instead.
He was also the first to theorize the existence of tachyons, particles that travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. They remain impossible to prove in experiments to this day however. However, he's never been recognized by the Nobel committee, which many experts also say passed him over in 2005 in favour of another scientists, for a breakthrough that he actually worked with him on.
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Meghnad Saha was actually a classmate of SN Bose in college, also a student under JC Bose. Despite hailing from a poor, backward community near Dhaka, he went to perform outstanding research, including the Saha ionization equation, used to describe chemical and physical conditions in stars. Despite the Saha equation being a fundamental part of astrophysics and astrochemistry however, he's been passed over for the Nobel Prize multiple times.
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One of the few living scientists on this list, CNR Rao is considered one of the foremost material chemists in the world. Over the years he's made major contributions to the understanding of transition metal oxides, magneto resistance, high temperature superconductivity, and nano materials. However, The Nobel Prize is usually awarded to breakthroughs that have directly resulted in the formation of new scientific studies and the like, which unfortunately is not the case for Rao's work.
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Rai Bahadur Sir Upendranath Brahmachari was one of the leading medical practitioners of his time. He synthesised Urea Stibamine in 1922, determining that it was a good substitute for compounds containing antimony, which you might know as kohl, largely used at the time as a cosmetic or in some cases a drug.?
Specifically, Brahmachari figured out that Urea Stibamine was effective in treating Visceral leishmaniasis, a fatal parasitic disease at the time running rampant through Assam. In the process, he likely saved thousands of lives. And this was years before we got antibiotics, or indeed any other ways to treat most illnesses, aside from palliative methods.
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Asima Chatterjee was a prominent organic chemist of the 20th century. Most notably, her work includes the development of anti-epileptic and anti-malarial drugs, as well as cataloguing a considerable volume on India's medicinal plants. She was the first woman to receive a Doctorate of Science from an Indian university. She was actually a student of SN Bose, and had at least 400 papers published in both national and international journals.