50 Timeless Scientists

194 Pages·2009·11.81 MB·English

by  Krishna K. Murty

K. Krishna Murty

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Timeless Scientists
K. Krishna Murty
PUSTAK MAHAL
Delhi • Humba i• Patna • Hyderabad • Bangaolre • IcnJon
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Edition : September, 2008
ISBN 978-81-223-1030-6
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PREFACE
Man's ability to think is the motive power behind all human
progress. The desire to discover, ability to create, dissatisfaction
at the present and the persistence despite failures are the
wheels of development. Chance, serendipity, accident,
inspiration or emotional experiences all are Nature's ways but
for sure it favors a prepared mind! We now enjoy those fruits
from the gardens of Arya Bhatta to Amar Bose, from Charles
Goodyear to Charles Townes and from Susruta to Subba Rao.
The story of science is an exciting drama unfolding comedy
and tragedy, success and failure. When the tireless inventive
geniuses worked dangerously into the frontiers of unknown
knowledge, nature cracked its codes in mysterious ways and
the laboratories have crackled some time in wonder, some time
in humor and some time in mysticism. Science is habitually
associated with cloistered laboratories, with cobwebs and
cluttered instruments and scientists with disheveled hair,
shabby dress, and papers floating around with esoteric ideas
and complicated formulas. Hope was in their dreams with
courage making them a pristine reality. "It is courage based on
confidence, and it is confidence based on experience." After
months of perspiration, technical challenges and personal
frustration, when the ideas were perfected into practical shapes,
all they received was outrageous ridicule. But can we now survive
if any one of those marvels were to be removed from our lives?
Nature is an exciting arena and "the great ocean of truth lay
all undiscovered before us." In spite of all the scientific
breakthroughs and technological marvels, we continue to be
small pebbles on the shores of the vast ocean of knowledge.
Haldane's "own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer
than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose!"
Now we have the stories of over fifty great men who dived
deep into those queer depths.
Our scientist sages saw the heavens with their naked eyes
centuries before it was magnified for the western world. Is there
a limit to Chandrasekhar? Our own Benjamin Peary Paul's love
for roses raised the curtain for Green Revolution. A British
scientist bequeathed his body to an Indian medical college.
Here we have scientists who missed Nobel Prize and those
whom Nobel missed. A Nobel Prize awarded to Pauling was
branded as an insult! But he is the only one to receive two
unshared Nobels. Bardeen promised Swedish king that he would
return and he did for another Nobel. An agricultural Scientist
received a Peace Nobel Prize. Yes! What is peace without food?
Barbara Mcclintock refused to publish her papers anguished at
the hostile scientific community, but Nobel committee
discovered her in 1983.
Then we have scientists who received awards in prison cells,
scientists who made discoveries in the prison cells. Tesla was
thrown out of his own labs, cheated by another great man but
his alternating current runs our homes now. Carlson went from
pillar to post with his photocopy machine and sooner or later
we may have a Xerox of human being. Townes received
the revelation for LASER on a park bench. When Maiman
made the practical Laser, a Hollywood actress wondered if it is a
death Ray.
Medicines from Jenner, Pasteur and the like consigned
some diseases to history. If only Subba Rao lived a few years
more, he would have killed some more diseases. A trio of
scientists transformed the twentieth century by inventing the
transistor. To top it all, a scientist who was not allowed to go on
a holiday invented the microchip.
A school teacher testified in the court to save his old
student, Fansworth from greedy corporations for his rightful
invention, the television. Davy openly accepted his student as
his greatest discovery, Michael Faraday indeed!
New York Times reversed its ridicule ladled out on a rocket
scientist after 40 years only after man landed on the moon. Pauli
discovered Neutrinos but could not believe their existence.
When proved, he kept his promise of champagne casket.
You have them all! It is not a weary chronology of oft
repeated Einstein or Newton but a delightful journey into the
biographies some of the unsung heroes through their trials and
tribulations, eurekas and euphorias, their pleasures and pains,
and their dreams and delusions.
They educate and entertain you and you are enticed.
Come in please! Entry not restricted!

Contents
1. Amar Bose (Bose Systems) 9
2. Aryabhatta (Mathematician and Astronomer) 13
3. Barbara Mc Clintock (Genius Genetist) 16
4. Benjamin Peary Paul (Father of Roses) 20
5. Bhaskaracharya (Mathematician and Astrologer) 23
6. C. N. R. Rao (Material Chemist) 27
7. C. R. Rao (Rao Theorems) 31
8. Charles Goodyear (Vulcanisation) 34
9. Charles H. Townes (Laser) 38
10. Charles Kettering (Automobile Inventions) 41
11. Chestor Carlson (Photocopy Machine) 44
12. E. C. G. Sudarshan (Tachyons) 48
13. Edward Jenner (Vaccination) 52
14. Felix Hoffman (Aspirin and Heroin) 55
15. Howard Florey (Production of Penicillin) 58
16. Humphrey Davy (Davy Lamp) 62
17. J. B. S. Haldane (Haldane's Principle) 65
18. Jack Kilby (Integrated Circuit) 69
19. Jayant Vishnu Narlikar (Astrophysicist) 73
20. John Bardeen (Transistor) 76
21. Jonas Salk (Polio vaccine) 80
22. Linus Pauling (Chemical Bond) 84
23. Louis Jean Pasteur (Pasteurisation) 88
24. M. S. Swaminathan (Father of Green Revolution) 92
25. Meghnad Saha (Saha Equation) 97
26. Niels Bohr (Bohr's Model) 100
27. Nikola Tesla (Alternating Current) 104
28. Norman Borlaug (Agricultural Scientist) 108
29. P. C. Mahalanobis (Mahalanobis Distance) 112
30. Philo Farnsworth (Electronic Television) 115
31. Raja Ramanna (Nuclear Physicist) 119
32. Robert H. Goddard (Rocket Pioneer) 123
33. Robert Noyce (Integrated Circuit) 127
34. Ronald Ross (Malaria Cure) 130
35. S. Chandrasekhar (Chandrasekhar Limit) 134
36. Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar (Magneto Chemistry) 138
37. Sigmund Freud (Father of Psychoanalysis) 142
38. Sushruta (First Cosmetic Surgeon) 145
39. Albert Szent Gyorgyi (Vitamin C) 149
40. Theodore H. Maiman (Practical Laser) 152
41. Tim Berners-Lee (Internet) 156
42. M.K. Vainu Bappu (Astronomer) 159
43. Varahamihira (Mathematician and Astrologer) 162
44. Vikram Sarabhai (Space Scientist) 165
45. Walter Brattain (Transistor) 169
46. Washington Carver (Agriculture Scientist) 173
47. William Shockley (Transistor) 177
48. Wilson Greatbatch (Implantable Heart Pacemaker) . 181
49. Wolfgang Ernst Pauli (Pauli's Principle) 185
50. Yellapragada Subba Rao (Auromycin and Hetrazan).. 188