Introduction:

• Indians have played an important role in the field of science and technology. The Indus Valley Civilization, Vedic age and later periods saw great achievements by Indians in the field of Science and technology.
• In modern times many Indian scientists and mathematicians have done phenomenal work and some of them even received awards like Nobel Prize for their contributions to science in technology.
• India belongs to the select group of countries that have developed indigenous nuclear technology. India is among the few countries which have developed ballistic missiles. In the field of space science, India has the capability to launch GSLV satellites.

Aryabhatta (476- 550 CE):

• Aryabhatta also was known as Aryabhatta 1 was the first major astronomer and mathematician from the classical age of Indian astronomy and Indian mathematics.
• His major works include Aryabhatiya and Arya-Siddhanta.
• He calculated the orbits of planets, and scientifically explained the Solar and lunar eclipses.
• He calculated the distance between Earth and Moon. He proposed that Earth rotates on its axis.
• He gave the theory that the apparent motion of stars is due to the movement of Earth.
• He calculated the circumference of the earth and proposed that the shape of Earth is not flat.
• He worked on the place value system and zero as a symbol and concept.

C.V. Raman:

• V. Raman was one of the most famous scientists in India. Raman’s academic brilliance was established at a very young age. He had a pioneering work on scattering of light, C.V. Raman won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1930.
• He was the first Asian and first non-White to receive any Nobel Prize in the sciences. Raman also worked on the acoustics of musical instruments. He was the first to investigate the harmonic nature of the sound of the Indian drums such as the tabla and the mridangam.
• He discovered that, when light traverses a transparent material, some of the deflected light changes in wavelength. This phenomenon is now called the Raman scattering and is the result of the Raman Effect.
• Raman effect, change in the wavelength of light that occurs when a light beam is deflected by molecules. When a beam of light traverses a dust-free, transparent sample of a chemical compound, a small fraction of the light emerges in directions other than that of the incident (incoming) beam. Most of this scattered light is of unchanged wavelength. A small part, however, has wavelengths different from that of the incident light; its presence is a result of the Raman effect.

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar:

• He was one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century. He did commendable work in astrophysics, physics and applied mathematics.
• Chandrasekhar has bestowed the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1983 Physics for his mathematical theory of black holes. The Chandrasekhar limit is named after him.
• He was the nephew of CV Raman. Chandra became a United States citizen in 1953. Chandra was a popular teacher who guided over fifty students to their PhD including some who went on to win the Nobel Prize themselves.
• His research explored nearly all branches of theoretical astrophysics and he published ten books, each covering a different topic, including one on the relationship between art and science.
• His most famous work concerns the radiation of energy from stars, particularly white dwarf stars, which are the dying fragments of stars.

Venkataraman Ramakrishnan:

• Venkataraman, Indian born American is a senior scientist in the Structural Division at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, in Cambridge, England.
• He has worked in various fields of biology during the earlier part of his career. He is internationally recognized for the determination of the atomic structure of the 30s ribosomal subunit.
• Ramakrishnan received numerous awards such as he was elected a Member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) in 2002 and a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2003.
• He was chosen a Member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2004. In 2007, Ramakrishnan has bestowed the Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine and the Datta Lectureship and Medal of the Federation of European Biochemical Societies (FEBS).
• In 2008, he won the Heatley Medal of the British Biochemical Society. Since 2008, he is a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge and a Foreign Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy.
• In 2009, Ramakrishnan was honoured with the Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with Thomas A. Steitz and Ada Yonath. He received India’s second-highest civilian honour, the Padma Vibhushan, in 2010.
• Ramakrishnan was knighted in the 2012 New Year Honours for services to Molecular Biology. In the same year, he was awarded the Sir Hans Krebs Medal by the FEBS. In 2013, he won the Spanish Jiménez-Diáz Prize.

Jagdish Chandra Bose:

• Jagdish Chandra Bose was an eminent scientist. He developed the use of galena crystals for making receivers, both for short-wavelength radio waves and for white and ultraviolet light.
• In 1895, two years before Marconi’s demonstration, Bose demonstrated wireless communication using radio waves, using them to ring a bell remotely and to explode some gunpowder.
• He invented many of the microwave components such as waveguides, horn antennas, polarizers, dielectric lenses and prisms, and even semiconductor detectors of electromagnetic radiation in the last decade of the nineteenth century.
• He also proposed the existence of electromagnetic radiation from the Sun, which was confirmed in 1944. After that Bose focused his attention on response phenomena in plants.
• He presented that not only animal but vegetable tissues produce similar electric responses under different kinds of stimuli – mechanical, thermal, electrical and chemical.

Satyendra Nath Bose:

• Satyendra Nath Bose was an outstanding Indian physicist specialising in quantum mechanics. He is of course most remembered for his excellent role played in the class of particles ‘bosons‘, which were named after him by Paul Dirac to commemorate his work in the field.
• Basically, he is known for his work in Quantum Physics. He is famous for “Bose-Einstein Theory” and a kind of particle in an atom has been named after his name Boson.
• Bose adapted a lecture at the University of Dhaka on the theory of radiation and the ultraviolet catastrophe into a short article called “Planck’s Law and the Hypothesis of Light Quanta” and sent it to Albert Einstein.
• Einstein agreed with him, translated Bose’s paper “Planck’s Law and Hypothesis of Light Quanta” into German, and had it published in Zeitschrift für Physik under Bose’s name, in 1924.
• This formed the basis of the Bose-Einstein Statistics. In 1937, Rabindranath Tagore dedicated his only book on science, Visva–Parichay, to Satyendra Nath Bose. The Government of India awarded him India’s second-highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan in 1954.

Srinivasa Ramanujan:

• Srinivasa Ramanujan was a mathematician. He is extensively believed to be the greatest mathematician of the 20th Century. Srinivasa Ramanujan made a major contribution to the analytical theory of numbers and worked on elliptic functions, continued fractions, and infinite series. His published and unpublished works have kept some of the best mathematical brains in the world.

Vikram Sarabhai:

• Vikram Sarabhai was among the distinguished scientists of India. He is considered the Father of the Indian space program. India’s first satellite Aryabhata launched in 1975, was one of the many projects planned by him.
• Like Bhabha, Sarabhai wanted the practical application of science to reach the common man. Therefore he saw a golden opportunity to harness space science to the development of the country in the fields of communication, meteorology, remote sensing and education.
• The Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE) launched in 1975-76, brought education to five million people in 2,400 Indian villages.
• In 1965, he established the Community Science Centre in Ahmedabad to popularise science among children. His profound cultural interests led him, along with his wife Mrinalini Sarabhai, to establish Darpana Academy, an institution devoted to performing arts and propagation of the ancient culture of India.
• Besides scientist, he had a combined quality as an innovator, industrialist and visionary. He was awarded the Bhatnagar Memorial Award for Physics in 1962, the Padma Bhushan in 1966, and was subsequently awarded the Padma Vibhushan.
• He was the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission in 1966, Vice-President and Chairman of the UN Conference on peaceful uses of outer space in 1968, and President of the 14th General Conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
• The International Astronomical Union named a crater in the moon (in the Sea of Serenity) after him, in honour of his marvellous role in science.

Dr Homi Jehangir Bhabha:

• He is considered the originator of the Indian Nuclear Research Programme. India accomplished nuclear capability due to the extreme efforts of Homi, thereby avoiding certain conflicts simply through non-aggression treaties. This contribution of Bhabha augments the status of India on the world stage.
• He had a brilliant persona with multi-faceted qualities. He was fond of music, painting and writing. Some of his paintings are displayed in the British Art Galleries and the TIFR art collection today is rated as one of the best collections of contemporary Indian art in the country.
• He is the recipient of Adam’s Award, Padma Bhushan, an Honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States.

APJ Abdul Kalam:

• Dr APJ Abdul Kalam is remembered as a great scientist, an inspirational leader and an extraordinary human being. As a scientist, Kalam made an effort to develop the Polar SLV and SLV-III projects between the 1970s and 1990s. Both of which proved to be a success.
• In the 1970s, Kalam also directed two projects, namely, Project Devil and Project Valiant, which sought to develop ballistic missiles from the technology of the successful SLV programme.
• Despite the disapproval of the Union Cabinet, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi allotted secret funds for these aerospace projects through her discretionary powers under Kalam’s directorship.
• Kalam played a vital role in convincing the Union Cabinet to conceal the true nature of these classified aerospace projects. His research and educational leadership brought him great laurels and prestige in the 1980s, which prompted the government to initiate an advanced missile program under his directorship.
• Besides a distinguished scientist and engineer, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam served as the 11th President of India from the period 2002 to 2007.
• After post-presidency, Kalam became a visiting professor at the Indian Institute of Management Shillong, the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, and the Indian Institute of Management Indore; an honorary fellow of Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, chancellor of the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology Thiruvananthapuram; professor of Aerospace Engineering at Anna University; and an adjunct at many other academic and research institutions across India.
• He taught information technology at the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, and technology at Banaras Hindu University and Anna University.
• He played an intensive political and technological role when the Pokhran-II nuclear tests were conducted. Kalam served as the Chief Project Coordinator, along with R. Chidambaram during the testing phase. Photos and snapshots of him taken by the media elevated Kalam as the country’s top nuclear scientist.
• He had a brilliant and dominant personality and he was a man of vision, who always had novel ideas for the development of the country and is also popular as the Missile Man of India.

Abhas Mitra:

• He is a distinguished Indian astrophysicist and famous for his distinct views on several front-line astrophysics concepts, particularly black holes and Big Bang Cosmology.
• His research has received extensive attention, especially in India, which is reflected by the fact that he is one of the most frequently mentioned Indian physicists on the web.
• Mitra is associated with the `Himalayan Gamma-Ray Observatory’, being set up at Han Leh jointly by Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre and Indian Institute of Astrophysics.
• He is also an Adjunct Prof. at Homi Bhabha National Science Institute since 2010.
• Dr Mitra is also a member of the International Astronomical Union.

Aditi Pant:

• She is an eminent Indian oceanographer. She was a part of the Indian expedition to Antarctica in 1983 and became the first Indian woman to visit Antarctica (along with Sudipta Sengupta).
• Dr Aditi was bestowed the Antarctica award with Dr Jaya Naithani and Dr Kanwal Vilku by the government of India for her excellent contributions to the Antarctic program.