India is full of geniuses and innovators who have made us proud. Needless to say, our country’s contributions to the field of science are some of the greatest. But here’s the thing. Most of these scientists are either not well-known or not talked about enough. The years of hard work that these people have put in is immensely applaudable and deserves our attention.
If you haven’t heard of them, here are 15 lesser-talked about Indian innovators that you must take out time to read about:
1. Yellapragada Subbarow
Even if you don’t understand the technicalities, I’m sure you know what cancer is. This Indian biochemist discovered the function of adenosine triphosphate as an energy source in the cell , and developed methotrexate for the treatment of cancer! Guess who’s helping us out, immensely?
2. Satyendra Nath Bose
He is ‘one of those’ who actually met Albert Einstein to formulate a theory related to the gas-like qualities of electromagnetic radiation! Indeed a brilliant mathematician and physicist.
3. Vinod Dham
He is popularly known as the Father of the Pentium Chip because of his contributions in the development of Pentium Processor for Intel. No wonder Intel is one of the world’s largest and highest valued semiconductor chip makers!
4. Jagdish Chandra Bose
If you love listening to the radio, you should know the first public demonstration of radio waves for communication was made by Mr Bose in 1895. A true pioneer in communications!
5. Narinder Singh Kapany
Regarded as an unsung hero by Fortune Magazine, his earlier works led to the invention of optic fibers. Thank him for those pretty optic-light lamps at your place!
6. Prafulla Chandra Ray
Guess who’s the founder of India’s first pharmaceutical company, Bengal Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals? Hats off to this amazing chemist and entrepreneur!
7. S.S. Abhyankar
This mathematician is famous for his outstanding contributions to algebraic geometry. Now you know who to blame for all the cumbersome algebra problems!
8. Meghnad Saha
We may not understand the fundas behind the astrological crap we hear everyday. But this astrophysicist developed the Saha equation which explains chemical and physical cond itions in stars. It is considered as the twelfth most important landmark in the history of astronomy!
9. Har Gobind Khorana
Two words. Genetic code. He won a Nobel Prize in 1968 for his outstanding work in the field and is the first person to segregate the DNA parts and chains of nucleotides. But how many of us have heard of him?
10. Dr Raj Reddy
If you have heard of artificial intelligence, then you must know the man behind its inception. He is the winner of the Turing Award, accredited with Padma Bhushan and a key faculty member of Stanford and Carnegie Mellon for more than 40 years.
11. Gopalaswamy Doraiswamy Naidu
How does an electric motor work? Well, because of him! He is referred to as the Edison of India and has manufactured the first electric motor in India, in 1937. But that’s not all! H is other inventions include super-thin shaving blades, a distance adjuster for film cameras, a fruit juice extractor, a tamper-proof vote-recording machine and a kerosene-run fan!
12. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
So he graduated with a degree in physics before reaching his twentieth birthday, is a child prodigy and The Chandrasekhar Limit is named after him! Insane right? For the bulk of work that he’s done, he also won a Nobel Prize.
13. G.N.Ramachandran
Along with his major contributions in Physics and Biology, he discovered the ways to describe the 3-D structure of proteins well before the same was done with crystallography. Amazing, right? He also created the Ramachandran plot for understanding peptide structure and was the first to propose a triple-helical model for the structure of collagen .
14. Ashoke Sen
A legendary physicist of his time, he was among the first recipients of the Fundamental Physics Prize “for opening the path to the realisation that all string theories are different limits of the same underlying theory”. Currently, a professor at the Harish-Chandra Research Institute , Allahabad, he is also the Morningstar Visiting Professor at MIT .
15. Aneesur Rahman
Have you heard about the Aneesur Rahman Prize for computational physics? This man has an award in his honour for being the father of molecular dynamics, a discipline of physics that utilizes computers to simulate microscopic behavior of physical systems. His study of liquid argon in 1964 started an entire field of study!
Special mention: H emendra Nath Chatterjee
We weren’t aware of the Diarrhoea treatment until he showed us how. Let’s remember him as the Bengali scientist who was the first to formulate and demonstrate the effectiveness of Orally Rehydrated Saline for diarrhoea management.
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