The 20th century witnessed some of the most startling strides as far as the field of science and technology is concerned. Among these, the Indians account for a significant share of the pie. Despite constraints in resources, a few individuals excelled in the field of science and technology making contribution in the field of science. In a roughly chronological order, here is what can be seen as highlights of Indian Science in the twentieth century, as mentioned by Jayant V. Narlikar, in his book, "The Scientific Edge".

Srinivas Ramanujan, discovered by the Cambridge Mathematician G.H. Hardy, whose great mathematical findings were beginning to be appreciated from 1915 to 1919, his achievements were to be fully understood much later, well after his untimely death in 1920. For example, his work on highly composite numbers with a large number of factors started a whole new line of investigations in the theory of such numbers. A self-taught mathematician, Ramanujan had an uncanny mathematical manipulative ability. Ramanujan had an intimate familiarity with numbers, and excelled especially in number theory and modular function theory. His familiarity with numbers was demonstrated by the following incident. During an illness in England, Hardy visited Ramanujan in the hospital. When Hardy remarked that he had taken taxi number 1729, a singularly unexceptional number, Ramanujan immediately responded that this number was actually quite remarkable: it is the smallest integer that can be represented in two ways by the sum of two cubes: 1729=13+123=93+103. He stands tall among all those who gave India a face on the world map Mathematics.

Source: Eric Weisstein's World of Science

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Meghnad Saha is famous for many of his contributions, which includes the ionization equation (year 1920) which opened the door to stellar astrophysics. He belongs to an outstanding group of Indian scientists whose contributions revolutionised diverse branches of knowledge and earned global recognition. The life of Saha was in a sense an integral part of growth of scientific research and progress in India. In brief he was a prophet of science in the country. He introduced the teaching of Nuclear Physics in Calcutta University at a time when the world had not even witnessed the enormous impact of Nuclear Energy. Having to teach a variety of subjects (hydrostatics, spectroscopy, thermodynamics and work in the Heat Laboratory) he devoured the literature and taught himself with rare meticulousness the basics of physics, carefully following books by the great masters such as Plank's Thermodynamics, Nernst's Das Neue Warmsatz along with the original papers of Bohr and Sommerfield on the Quantum Theory of the atom. Together with S. N. Bose he made the first English translation of Einstein's papers on Relativity.

Source: Vigyan Prasar

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Raman's discovery that molecules scatter light is known as the Raman effect. It is used to study the internal structure of the molecules. Chandrashekhara Venkata Raman joined the financial services of the Indian Government at the age of eighteen and carried out and published extensive research on acoustics and optics in his free time for a decade. In 1921 he delivered a lecture at the oxford conference on the theory of stringed instruments. In 1924 he became 'Fellow' of the Royal society and was eventually knighted by the British Government. While in Calcutta, he made enormous contributions to vibration, sound, musical instruments, ultrasonic, diffraction, photoelectricity, colloidal particles, X-ray diffraction, magnetron, dielectrics, and the celebrated "RAMAN" effect, which fetched him the Noble Prize in 1930. From 1933 till 1970 (his death) he lived and worked in Bangalore, first at the IISc and then his own (Raman Research Institute). All in all, he published 475 papers and wrote five monographs on an incredibly wide range of topics. He enthused generations of younger people with his excitement about nature and science, and left an incredible mark on the landscape of India.

Source: Vigyan Prasar

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4.Professor Gopalasamudram Narayana Ramachandran, physicist turned outstanding structural biologist was the first to record `X-ray topographs', a method of studying surface features of crystals. Stung by undue criticism on a non-issue about his collagen structure, Ramachandran went on to enunciate the fundamental stereo-chemical principles for conformational analysis of proteins through the famous Ramachandran plot. The Ramachandran plot contains many new insights relating to protein folding and design for a diligent researcher even today. The review Ramachandran wrote with Sasisekharan in Advances in Protein Chemistry at the instance of John Edsall was a landmark in the field and inspired generations of researchers. Ramachandran became a distinguished leader and brought together a large number of pioneers from various parts of the world, including Lawrence Bragg, Linus Pauling, Dorothy Hodgkin, Stanford Moore, Severo Ochoa, Maurice Wilkins, Paul Flory, Ephraim Katchalski, David Phillips, Elkan Blout, John Edsall, John Schellman and Harold Scheraga, who visited the young Madras School of Biophysics during the international meetings he organized in 1963 and 1967. Ramachandran was a crystallographer par excellence. Tackling the phase problem through anomalous dispersion, development of a novel Fourier method for structural analysis and statistical studies of a pair of structure factors of related structures were his most notable contributions.

Source: Crystallography Journals Online

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India, through the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO, created in 1969), part of the Department of Space (DOS), has continued its development programs for satellites and launch vehicles. Main satellite programs are the INSAT (Indian National Satellite) telecommunications system, the IRS (Indian Remote Sensing) satellites for earth resources, the METSAT weather satellites, and the new GSat series of large (up to 2.5-tons) experimental geostationary comsats. India's main launchers today are the PSLV (Polar Space Launch Vehicle) and the Delta 2-class GSLV (Geostationary Space Launch Vehicle). In 2002, India augmented its weather forecasting ability by successfully launching a dedicated METSAT with a PSLV rocket into a highly elliptical orbit for later maneuvering into its geosynchronous (stationary) orbital slot using onboard propulsion. The launch was the seventh flight of the four-stage PSLV, in a modified version, and the first to place a satellite into geosynchronous transfer orbit. Conducted by ISRO, the launch took place from India's Sriharikota Space Center, renamed Satish Dhawan Space Center in 2002 after the former chairman of India's space commission and a pioneer of the nation's space program.

(Source: Nasa )

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Chandrasekhar, one of the stellar figures in the realms of Astrophysics, studied at Presidency College, University of Madras in India and then at Trinity College, Cambridge England. From 1933 to1937 he worked at Cambridge, then joined the staff at the University of Chicago where he was to remain for the rest of his life. In 1930 Chandra, as he was always called, showed that a star of a mass greater than 1.4 times that of the Sun had to end its life by collapsing into an object of enormous density unlike any object known at that time. He said one is left speculating on other possibilities, namely objects such as black holes. For his work in this area he was awarded the Nobel prize for Physics in 1983. He described this work in The Mathematical Theory of Black Holes (1983).

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7. Dr. Hargobind Khorana shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology in 1968 with Marshall Nirenberg and Robert Holley for cracking the genetic code. In 1970 he became the Alfred Sloan Professor of Biology and Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he continued his work. Apart from the Nobel Prize, Khorana has won many awards and honors for his achievement. apart from Nobel prize , Khurana won Padma Vibushan, Presidential Award, India (1972); J.C.Bose Medal, Bose Institute, Calcutta (1972) and Willard Gibbs medal of the Chicago Section of American Chemical Society (1973-74). He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences, Washington as well as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Khorana's work, which is an important scientific landmark of the twentieth century, has brought closer the day when synthetic DNA may be introduced into the defective human tissues to bring about their repair or treat mentally retarded people and change them into more intelligent and healthy human beings. His synthesis of RNA, capable of replication in laboratory, is a step towards the creation of life artificially. In fact, the researches have opened up a new branch called Genetic Engineering in Science.

(Source: The American Embassy School/intranet/nobel)

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Satyendra Nath Bose was born in Calcutta. Educated at Presidency College in Calcutta, Bose was a successful and bright student. He started his career as a lecturer in Calcutta university. His work ranged over statistical mechanics, the electromagnetic properties of ionosphere, theories of X-ray crystallography, and unified field theory. His name is now enshrined in physics. A "boson" is a particle of integer spin that obeys Bose-Einstein statistics and is the counterpart of a "fermion", which is a particle of half-integer spin that obeys Fermi- Dirac statistics. Apart from physics he did some research in biochemistry and literature (Bengali, English). He made deep studies in chemistry, geology, zoology, anthropology, engineering and other sciences. Being Bengali of origin he devoted a lot of time to promote Bengali as teaching language and to develop the region as well. During his travel to Europe in 1924 he worked with Marie Curie. He was also coworker of Albert Einstein. He is considered as one of the most intelligent, broad-minded scientists of the 20th century.

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Our country's atomic energy programme owes its origin to Homi Bhabha, the first Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and to the excellent rapport he established with Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. The support given by Nehru enabled Bhabha to pursue boldly his vision of making India self sufficient in nuclear technologies. Bhabha was able to choose out-standing engineers and scientists to head the various activities of the programme in its formative years. With eminent and dedicated personalities, it was not difficult for Bhabha to achieve what he wanted in a very short time. The classic example was the decision to build a swimming pool reactor `Apsara' at Trombay on March 15, 1955 and the reactor went `critical' on August 4,1956! There are many such examples of technological successes such as building the CIRUS and DHRUVA reactors for experimental work, extracting uranium from its ores, fabrication of fuel rods of uranium and setting up the plutonium plant to extract plutonium from irradiated fuel elements. It was Bhabha's idea to withdraw fuel elements from the reactor after a certain irradiation level so that one could use the extracted plutonium for weapons as well. Vikram Sarabhai was another scientist who succeeded Bhabha, and credit of establishing the Reactor Research Centre (now renamed Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research) at Kalpakkam should go to him. The first power reactor to be commissioned was at Tarapur, which is a boiling water reactor (BWR). But, all the subsequent reactors are based on the Canadian design, PHWR, using pressurized heavy water and natural uranium oxide fuel elements. India chose this option, as it did not have the required technologies for uranium isotope enrichment. Excellence was achieved in other basic sciences including analytical chemistry, spectroscopy, radiochemistry, isotopes, biology and biochemistry. After Pokhran, it is not possible to keep the weapons programs under wraps. The full credit for this program goes to Raja Ramanna and to Chidambaram. A few select scientists and engineers from the Atomic Energy Establishment and the Defence Research Organizations contributed to this project.

(Source: The Hindu)

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The Green Revolution, spreading over the period from1967/68 to 1977/78, changed India's status from a food-deficient country to one of the world's leading agricultural nations. Until 1967 the government largely concentrated on expanding the farming areas. But the population was growing at a much faster rate than food production. This called for an immediate and drastic action to increase yield. The action came in the form of the Green Revolution. The term 'Green Revolution' is a general one that is applied to successful agricultural experiments in many developing countries. India is one of the countries where it was most successful.

There were three basic elements in the method of the Green Revolution

The area of land under cultivation was being increased from 1947 itself. But this was not enough to meet the rising demand. Though other methods were required, the expansion of cultivable land also had to continue. So, the Green Revolution continued with this quantitative expansion of farmlands. Double cropping was a primary feature of the Green Revolution. Instead of one crop season per year, the decision was made to have two crop seasons per year. The one-season-per-year practice was based on the fact that there is only one rainy season annually. Water for the second phase now came from huge irrigation projects. Dams were built and other simple irrigation techniques were also adopted. Using seeds with superior genetics was the scientific aspect of the Green Revolution. The Indian Council for Agricultural Research developed new strains of high yield variety seeds, mainly wheat and rice and also millet and corn. The Green Revolution was a technology package comprising material components of improved high yielding varieties of two staple cereals (rice and wheat), irrigation or controlled water supply and improved moisture utilization, fertilizers, and pesticides, and associated management skills. Thanks to the new seeds, tens of millions of extra tones of grain a year are being harvested. The production of food grains has the rise of 400% from 50 MT in 1950 to 200 MT in 2000. This massive change has been possible because of sustained agricultural research done by the Indian scientists.

(Source: TERI)

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