Nobel laureates of India - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Rabindranath Tagore

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

1913 as well as first Asian

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913.

Citation : "Because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West".

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) was a poet, philosopher, educationist, artist and social activist. Hailing from an affluent land-owning family from Bengal

Bengal

Bengal is a historical and geographical region in the northeast region of the Indian Subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal. Today, it is mainly divided between the sovereign land of People's Republic of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal, although some regions of the previous...

, he received traditional education in India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

before traveling to England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

for further study. He abandoned his formal education and returned home, founding a school, Santiniketan

Santiniketan

Santiniketan is a small town near Bolpur in the Birbhum district of West Bengal, India, approximately 180 kilometres north of Kolkata . It was made famous by Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore, whose vision became what is now a university town that attracts thousands of visitors each year...

, where children received an education in consonance with Tagore's own ideas of communion with nature and emphasis on literature and the arts.

In time, Tagore's works, written originally in Bengali

Bengali language

Bengali or Bangla is an eastern Indo-Aryan language. It is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as Bengal, which comprises present day Bangladesh, the Indian state of West Bengal, and parts of the Indian states of Tripura and Assam. It is written with the Bengali script...

, were translated into English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

; the Geetanjali ("Tribute in verse"), a compendium of verses, named 'Song Offerings' in English was widely acclaimed for its literary genius. In 1913, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He was the first person of non-Western heritage to be awarded a Nobel Prize.

In protest against the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh

Jallianwala Bagh

Jallianwala Bagh is a public garden in Amritsar in the Punjab province of India, and houses a memorial of national importance, established in 1951 to commemorate the murder of peaceful celebrators on the occasion of the Punjabi New Year on April 13, 1919 in the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre...

massacre, he resigned the knighthood that had been conferred upon him in 1913. Tagore holds the unique distinction of being the composer of the national anthems of two countries, India

India

and Bangladesh

Bangladesh

Bangladesh , officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a sovereign state located in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...

C.V. Raman

Nobel award in 1930 in Physics for proving change in wavelength of light when travels through any object.

Citation : "...for his work on the scattering of light and for the discovery of the effect named after him".

Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics

Nobel Prize in Physics

The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded once a year by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 and awarded since 1901; the others are the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Peace Prize, and...

for the year 1930. He had been knighted only the year before and worked extensively on acoustics

Acoustics

Acoustics is the interdisciplinary science that deals with the study of all mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids including vibration, sound, ultrasound and infrasound. A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an acoustician while someone working in the field of acoustics...

and light

Light

Light or visible light is electromagnetic radiation that is visible to the human eye, and is responsible for the sense of sight. Visible light has wavelength in a range from about 380 nanometres to about 740 nm, with a frequency range of about 405 THz to 790 THz...

. He was also deeply interested in the physiology

Physiology

Physiology is the science of the function of living systems. This includes how organisms, organ systems, organs, cells, and bio-molecules carry out the chemical or physical functions that exist in a living system. The highest honor awarded in physiology is the Nobel Prize in Physiology or...

of the human eye

Human eye

The human eye is an organ which reacts to light for several purposes. As a conscious sense organ, the eye allows vision. Rod and cone cells in the retina allow conscious light perception and vision including color differentiation and the perception of depth...

. A traditionally-dressed man, he headed an institute that is today named after him: the Raman Research Institute

Raman Research Institute

Raman Research Institute is a research institute in Bangalore, India. It was started by Nobel laureate Sir C. V. Raman.The main areas of research are:*Astronomy and Astrophysics*Liquid Crystals*Theoretical Physics*Optics...

, Bangalore

Bangalore

Bengaluru , formerly called Bengaluru is the capital of the Indian state of Karnataka. Bangalore is nicknamed the Garden City and was once called a pensioner's paradise. Located on the Deccan Plateau in the south-eastern part of Karnataka, Bangalore is India's third most populous city and...

Amartya Sen

Citation: "...for his contributions to welfare economics".

Amartya Sen (born 1933) was the first Indian to receive the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, awarded to him in 1998 for his work on welfare economics

Welfare economics

Welfare economics is a branch of economics that uses microeconomic techniques to evaluate economic well-being, especially relative to competitive general equilibrium within an economy as to economic efficiency and the resulting income distribution associated with it...

. He has made several key contributions to research in this field, such as to the axiomatic theory of social choice; the definitions of welfare and poverty indexes; and the empirical studies of famine

Famine

A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including crop failure, overpopulation, or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompanied or followed by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality. Every continent in the world has...

. All are linked by his interest in distribution

Distribution of wealth

The distribution of wealth is a comparison of the wealth of various members or groups in a society. It differs from the distribution of income in that it looks at the distribution of ownership of the assets in a society, rather than the current income of members of that society.-Definition of...

al issues and particularly in those most impoverished. Whereas Kenneth Arrow

Kenneth Arrow

Kenneth Joseph Arrow is an American economist and joint winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics with John Hicks in 1972. To date, he is the youngest person to have received this award, at 51....

's "impossibility theorem

Arrow's impossibility theorem

In social choice theory, Arrow’s impossibility theorem, the General Possibility Theorem, or Arrow’s paradox, states that, when voters have three or more distinct alternatives , no voting system can convert the ranked preferences of individuals into a community-wide ranking while also meeting a...

" suggested that it was not possible to aggregate individual choices into a satisfactory choice for society as a whole, Sen showed that societies could find ways to alleviate such a poor outcome.

Ronald Ross

Ronald Ross, born in Almora

Almora

Almora is a municipal board, a cantonment town in the Almora district in the state of Uttarakhand, India. Almora was founded in 1568.It is a town bustling with activity and a rich cultural heritage and history. It is considered the cultural heart of the Kumaon region of...

, India

India

, in 1857 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine administered by the Nobel Foundation, is awarded once a year for outstanding discoveries in the field of life science and medicine. It is one of five Nobel Prizes established in 1895 by Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, in his will...

in 1902 for his work on malaria

Malaria

Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...

.

He received many honours in addition to the Nobel Prize, and was given Honorary Membership of learned societies of most countries of Europe

Europe

, and of many other continents. He got an honorary M.D. degree in Stockholm in 1910 at the centenary celebration of the Caroline Institute. Whilst his vivacity and single-minded search for truth caused friction with some people, he enjoyed a vast circle of friends in Europe, Asia and America who respected him for his personality as well as for his genius.

Rudyard Kipling

Citation : "in consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas and remarkable talent for narration which characterize the creations of this world-famous author"

Rudyard Kipling, born in Mumbai

Mumbai

Mumbai , formerly known as Bombay in English, is the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is the most populous city in India, and the fourth most populous city in the world, with a total metropolitan area population of approximately 20.5 million...

, 1865 (then Bombay in British India), was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature

Nobel Prize in Literature

Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...

in 1907. He remains the youngest ever recipient of the Literature Nobel Prize and the first English-language writer to receive the Prize.
His literary career began with Departmental Ditties (1886), but subsequently he became chiefly known as a writer of short stories. A prolific writer, he achieved fame quickly. Kipling was the poet of the British Empire and its yeoman, the common soldier, whom he glorified in many of his works, in particular Plain Tales from the Hills (1888) and Soldiers Three (1888), collections of short stories with roughly and affectionately drawn soldier portraits. His Barrack Room Ballads (1892) were written for, as much as about, the common soldier. In 1894 appeared his Jungle Book, which became a children's classic all over the world. Kim (1901), the story of Kimball O'Hara and his adventures in the Himalayas, is perhaps his most felicitous work. Other works include The Second Jungle Book (1895), The Seven Seas (1896), Captains Courageous (1897), The Day's Work (1898), Stalky and Co. (1899), Just So Stories (1902), Trafficks and Discoveries (1904), Puck of Pook's Hill (1906), Actions and Reactions (1909), Debits and Credits (1926), Thy Servant a Dog (1930), and Limits and Renewals (1932),better be better than worst (1933). During the First World War Kipling wrote some propaganda books. His collected poems appeared in 1933.

Mother Teresa

Citation : "Humanitarian work."

Mother Teresa (1910–1997) was born in Skopje, then a city in Ottoman Empire. She is of Albanian origin. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. Toiling for years in the slums of Kolkata (Calcutta), her work centred on caring for the poor and suffering, among whom she herself died. "This year [1979] the world has turned its attention to the plight of children and refugees, and these are precisely the categories for whom Mother Teresa has for many years worked so selflessly."[3]

Mohammad Abdus Salam

Citation : "...for his work on the electroweak unification of the electromagnetic and weak forces".

Mohammad Abdus Salam was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics

Nobel Prize in Physics

for the year 1979. He was born in 1926, in Jhang, Punjab, British Raj

British Raj

British Raj was the British rule in the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947; The term can also refer to the period of dominion...

(now Pakistan

Pakistan

Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...

). He founded the Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics in Triste, Italy. The work for which he won the Nobel Prize was carried out at ICTP.

Hargobind Khorana

Citation : "...for their [Khorana's, Robert W. Holley

Robert W. Holley

Robert William Holley was an American biochemist. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1968 for describing the structure of alanine transfer RNA, linking DNA and protein synthesis.Holley was born in Urbana, Illinois, and graduated from Urbana High School in 1938...

's and Marshall W. Nirenberg

Marshall Warren Nirenberg

Marshall Warren Nirenberg was an American biochemist and geneticist of Jewish origin. He shared a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1968 with Har Gobind Khorana and Robert W. Holley for "breaking the genetic code" and describing how it operates in protein synthesis...

's] interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis".

Hargobind Khorana (1922-2011), a person of Indian origin, shared the 1968 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

for his work on genes

Gênes

Gênes is the name of a département of the First French Empire in present Italy, named after the city of Genoa. It was formed in 1805, when Napoleon Bonaparte occupied the Republic of Genoa. Its capital was Genoa, and it was divided in the arrondissements of Genoa, Bobbio, Novi Ligure, Tortona and...

. He had left India in 1945 and became a naturalised

Naturalization

Naturalization is the acquisition of citizenship and nationality by somebody who was not a citizen of that country at the time of birth....

United States citizen in the 1970s. He continues to head a laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...

(MIT) in the United States.

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

Citation :"for his theoretical studies of the physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of the stars" Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1983. Born: 19 October 1910, Lahore, British Raj

British Raj

British Raj was the British rule in the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947; The term can also refer to the period of dominion...

(now in Pakistan) Died: 21 August 1995, Chicago, IL, USA Affiliation at the time of the award: University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan

Citation : '"for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome"' http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2009/index.html

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, born in Chidambaram

Chidambaram

Chidambaram is a fast growing industrial city in Eastern part of Tamil Nadu and the taluk headquarters of the Cuddalore district. It is located in 58 km from Pondicherry, 60 km from Karaikal, and 240 km south of Chennai by rail...

, Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu is one of the 28 states of India. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu lies in the southernmost part of the Indian Peninsula and is bordered by the union territory of Pondicherry, and the states of Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh...

, shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Nobel Prize in Chemistry

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of chemistry. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, awarded for outstanding contributions in chemistry, physics, literature,...

. He is now a US Citizen.

V.S. Naipaul

Citation : "for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories".

Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for the year 2001.

Rabindranath Tagore

C.V. Raman

Amartya Sen

Ronald Ross

Rudyard Kipling

Mother Teresa

Mohammad Abdus Salam

Hargobind Khorana

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan

V.S. Naipaul

See also