The Indian Space Programme

by Gurbir Singh

  Figure 4‑2 Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887–1920). Credit Professor Richard Askey

  Two years after arrival, Ramanujanwas offered a Trinity College Fellowship, along with a salary of￡250 per year. Ramanujan was now free to pursue his work in mathematics completely devoid of any conditions, including any obligation to teach. He seemed to have it all, international recognition, a significant body of published work and the security of tenure at a leading university. However, the ill health that had dogged him since childhood in India returned. His isolation from his family and wife probably triggered his depression. His last two years in the UK were spent in and out of nursing homes and sanatoriums in Cambridge, Wells and in the Derbyshire town of Matlock, where he complained about the poor quality of care. Later, he spent time nearer Cambridge at Fitzroy House and a hospital in Putney in London.[204] The combination of illnesses and isolation cut short his time in Cambridge and eventually his life.

  Ramanujan had been ill for a long period, fever, dysentery, diarrhoea and abdominal discomfort. At a particularly low point in 1918, Ramanujan attempted suicide by throwing himself in front of a train at a London underground station. The attempt failed through the action of a guardsman operating a switch that brought the train to a stop a few feet away.[205] He was briefly arrested (suicide was illegal at the time), but with Hardy’s intervention, all charges were dropped. This story was recalled by Hardy in 1936 during an evening dinner at Trinity College, where astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was completing his PhD. It was through this account retold by Chandrasekhar during a lecture in Delhi that India first came to learn about this dark episode of Ramanujan’s story. In bringing that story to India, Chandrasekhar was himself saddened and depressed by the misrepresentation that followed in the press. Chandrasekhar was accused of defaming Ramanujan and attempting to enhance his own reputation. Ramanujan had been his role model and had profoundly influenced Chandrasekhar's career choices.

  Ramanujan’s illness persisted throughout his time in the England. He recovered for short periods, one even long enough for him to return to Madras. Ramanujan left the UK on 27 February 1919 aboard the S.S. Nagoya and arrived weak and emaciated in Madras a month later. Upon his return to India, Ramanujan received a national hero's welcome.[206] He was held in the highest esteem for his intellectual prowess, maybe, second only to Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. Back in India, Ramanujan gained a second wind. He spent it almost entirely on writing about several complex concepts in pure mathematics.

  A year after his return he died. He had confided in his wife that he regretted not taking her to Cambridge with him. Had he done so, his diet would have been healthier, and the companionship would have sustained him emotionally. The cause of his illness was never known for certain, but food poisoning, vitamin deficiency, gastric ulcer, hepatic amoebiasis and tuberculosis were all potential candidates as the cause of death. A tuberculosis specialist who had treated Ramanujan immediately upon his arrival in India was recorded in the 1930s as saying that Ramanujan could and should have been saved had he not been misdiagnosed early on.[207]

  Much of Ramanujan’s work was published posthumously with Hardy’s assistance, but not all, especially what he had produced in his final year in India. In the spring of 1976, Professor George Andrews (born 1938) discovered what came to be known as Ramanujan’s Lost Notebook in Trinity College Library.[208] Seen for the first time in 50 years by someone who was capable of understanding their true value, Ramanujan’s work once again captured the imagination of the international mathematical community. In the Lost Notebook, Ramanujan contributed to several branches of mathematics, including elementary mathematics, number theory, infinite series, integrals, hypergeometric functions, q-series, continued fractions, theta functions and class invariants. There is some speculation that Ramanujan was working on some new over-arching theory, which his premature death prevented him from completing.[209] Although he died almost a century ago, he continues to inspire young mathematicians and scientists in the 21st century.[210] Modern science is using his mathematics to solve problems, such as the superstring theory and complex molecular systems. Physicists are using his work on the mock modular function to understand how black holes evolve.[211]

  Figure 4‑3 Sample from Ramanujan's Lost Notebook. Credit University of Madras

  Ramanujan was aware of his special abilities and unique achievements. On his deathbed, he told his wife that his name will be remembered for 100 years and she will always have money.[212] Hardy, himself an accomplished mathematician, rated Ramanujan as the best. Rating mathematicians by pure talent on a scale from 0 to 100, Hardy gave himself a score of 25 and Ramanujan 100. Speaking in 1936, Hardy asserted “I did not invent him but did discover him ... what a treasure I had found.”[213]

  C.V. Raman

  Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman was a gifted self-taught experimental scientist. By the age of 42, he had already achieved the three key accolades that most scientists covet. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1924,[214] knighted by the British government in 1929 and won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930. What makes his achievements even more remarkable is that he had to overcome the hurdles of being a subject of the British Empire. Unlike other Indian scientists of international repute, including those who made a significant contribution to the Indian space programme, Raman was entirely the product of the Indian education system. His industrious pursuit of scientific research took him into varied branches of science, including acoustics, spectroscopy, optics, astronomy, crystallography and radio. In addition to the many awards he received within India, he accepted others from the US, the USSR and France.[215] In his lifetime, he published 465 scientific papers, two-thirds of which are under his sole authorship, and founded two institutions, Indian Academy of Sciences and the Raman Research Institute. Both continue to play a central role in scientific research in India today.

  Raman had accurately predicted that he would win the Nobel Prize in Physics years before he did and was described as a “supreme egotist” by his own biographer and nephew Professor Sivaraj Ramaseshan, an accomplished scientist and an IISc Director. Once when asked why he wore a turban, which had become his hallmark especially during his trips to Europe, Raman quipped “Oh, if I did not wear one, my head will swell. You all praise me so much, and I need the turban to contain my ego.”[216] He was cantankerous, impetuous, quarrelsome and self-centred, but he was selfless in seeking out and fostering new talent and in putting the quest for knowledge ahead of the quest for personal wealth. He cherished his child-like wonder for scientific discovery. Throughout his working life, he exhibited complex and conflicting attributes, not unusual for an intelligent, industrious and dedicated man of science. Raman was born to a Tamil-speaking family near Tiruchirapalli in the southern state of Madras in British India. He was the second of ultimately eight siblings, five brothers and three sisters. His father played the violin and, as a teacher of mathematics and physics, maintained a collection of science books that probably nurtured Raman's curiosity of the natural world. He breezed through most of his early education academically ahead of his contemporaries by a few years. He matriculated at the age of 11 and with a scholarship attended the Presidency College in Madras, completing his Bachelor of Arts at the age of 15, followed by a Master’s degree three years later. By 1907, while still at the Presidency College in Madras, Raman wrote and published his first research paper, even though the college had no remit, facilities or tradition of research.[217]

  Figure 4‑4 C.V. Raman at the IISc. Credit IISc Archives

  Despite his interest in science, Raman followed his father’s guidance and successfully completed the competitive Financial Civil Service examination, which secured him a post in the Finance Department in Calcutta as Assistant Accountant-General at a lucrative starting salary of Rs.400 per month. In 1907, at the age of 18, he married Lokasundari Ammaul, and both moved to Calcutta, the capital of British India at the time. A devout vegetarian, he ate simple food usually cooked b
y his wife. The Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS) had a research laboratory that no one was actively using and, as luck would have it, it was located around the corner from the house that Raman rented on his arrival in Calcutta.[218] Raman engaged with the IACS conducting research in its laboratory before and after work as Assistant Accountant-General. His work took him away from the IACS, first to Rangoon in 1909 and then to Nagpur in 1910 (from where he observed the lunar eclipse using a 3-inch 7.62 cm telescope.[219] At both places, he converted part of his home into a laboratory so that the disruption to his experimental research was mitigated.

  On returning to Calcutta in 1911, he came across the Astronomical Society of India, which was founded the previous year. He joined as a member on 27 February 1912 and later served in a variety of roles including that of the secretary, librarian and director of the meteor section. He presented his own research papers on topics that included Astronomical Optics, Saturn in a Small Telescope and Eclipse of the Moon; he also wrote spectroscopic notes and a paper on the diffraction phenomena observed in the testing of optical surfaces.[220] Raman's work in astronomy has not attracted as much attention as his work in other fields. It did, however, play a significant role in bringing him into contact for the first time with scientists in prominent posts. He met with John Evershed, Director of the Kodaikanal Observatory, and Gilbert Walker, Director General of Observatories, in India and a wider influential audience, notably the Royal Society in the UK, through the scholarly publications that carried his work in Europe.

  In 1921, a congress of the universities of the Empire was held at Oxford in the UK to help coordinate the increasing activities within universities across the Empire. Raman was a member of the delegation that travelled to the UK from the University of Calcutta. While in the UK, Raman extended his personal network through meetings with scientists whose work he had read and was surprised to meet many who had read his.[221] He established contact with three Nobel laureates during that trip, J.J. Thomson (1846–1940, Nobel Prize winner in 1906 for the discovery of the electron), William H. Bragg (1862–1942, Nobel Prize winner along with his son Lawrence for understanding the structures of crystals using X-rays) and Ernest Rutherford (Nobel Prize winner in 1908 for his work on radioactivity).

  On his return journey to India aboard the S.S. Narkunda, Raman conducted an experiment on why the colour of the sea was blue. It was accepted wisdom that the blue colour of the sea was due to the reflection of the blue sky. By excluding the reflection and looking directly into the sea, Raman observed that the colour of the sea “far from being impoverished by suppression of sky reflection, was wonderfully improved thereby.” He concluded that the blueness of the sea was due to diffraction effect as light passed through the water. He wrote a two-page paper for publication in Nature before his ship docked in Bombay on 26 September 1921.[222]

  The discovery that led to Raman’s winning the Nobel prize was made on 28 February 1928. In 1927, Arthur H. Compton (1892–1962) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering Compton scattering, a change (increase or decrease) in the energy of an X-ray caused by passing close to an electron in an atom. Raman set out to explore whether a similar effect could be seen with light instead of X-rays. He found it. Raman discovered what came to be known as the Raman Effect (also called Raman scattering). He did so with the assistance of K.S. Krishnan (1898–1961) who conducted multiple experiments using a combination of bright sunlight, an 8-inch (20.32 cm) lens, a mercury arc lamp, a direct vision spectroscope and polarisation filters). The scattering was faint and the cause was not identical to that for Compton scattering, but it was real. The announcement appeared in the Associated Press of India on the following day under the heading ‘New Theory of Radiation. Prof. Raman’s Discovery’.

  Raman’s ego, self-confidence, arrogance and hubris were on par with his scientific brilliance. Self-nomination for the Nobel Prize is prohibited and soliciting nomination is considered to be unbecoming. Further, the nominations for the Nobel Prize are kept secret and published only 50 years after the award. Raman missed the 1929 window. However, in a letter dated 6 December 1929, he wrote to Niels Bohr (1885–1962) saying “I feel sure that if you give your influential support, the Nobel Committee for Physics may recommend that the award for 1930 may go to India for the first time.”[223] Raman did not know at the time that Bohr had already nominated him for the 1929 award and repeated his nomination for 1930. Raman received 10 nominations, including those from Ernest Rutherford and Charles T.R. Wilson.[224]

  Perhaps, it was through such private communication that Raman had secured sufficient confidence to book two tickets on a steam ship from India to Stockholm for November 1930, five months prior to the formal announcement that he was the recipient of the 1930 Nobel Prize in Physics. During his acceptance speech, he referred to Nehru indirectly stating that he had received a congratulatory telegram from his “dearest friend who was now in jail”. Raman noted that he had to accept the prize under the British Union flag and lamented “I realised that my poor country did not even have a flag of her own.”[225] In acknowledgement of his new-found international status, Raman was selected as the first Indian Director of the IISc in 1933 with the remit for the “promotion of advance instruction on original investigations in all branches of knowledge and their utilisation for the benefit of India.”[226] The first three directors of IISc were all British. Raman was selected as director from a list of 20 other applicants from all over the Empire, including Vancouver, Johannesburg, Colombo, London, Manchester and Bristol, as well as two from within India.[227] He took up his role as Director on 6 October 1932 at a salary of Rs. 3,000 per month, which included accommodation on IISc grounds. Following the remarkable success of his 1930 Nobel Prize, Raman could have taken a senior role in a research institute in the US or Europe, but he chose to stay in India.

  In his new role as the Director of IISc, Raman set up a new physics department where he conducted most of his research in optics, crystallography and acoustics. He reorganised other departments and helped develop workshops that produced scientific instruments and components rather than relying on Western imports. He also established the Indian Academy of Sciences with the intention of promoting pure and applied research and documenting the research in formal scholarly papers for national and international dissemination. It also served as a source of authoritative scientific advice for the government. Six years before he arrived at the IISc, he had started a Bulletin of the Indian Association that published results of original research. Today, the bulletin has grown into a full science journal, the Indian Journal of Physics.

  As director, he experienced pressure against his proposed reforms at IISc. His management and organisational skills honed during his time as the Assistant Accountant-General were strong, probably too strong but he had weaknesses too. His approach threatened some who held well-paid influential posts at the IISc. Even his admirers acknowledge his weakness in developing effective professional relationships. Over time a small but strong opposition evolved determined to oust Raman as the IISc director. To establish a centre of excellence in scientific research at the IISc and raise IISc’s international status, Raman wanted to persuade European scientists fleeing Nazi Germany and the War to make India their new home.[228] With this end in mind, he attempted to secure a full-time post at IISc for Max Born, a German physicist and mathematician who went on to win the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1954.

  By the autumn of 1935, Born’s post in Cambridge was coming to an end, and as chance would have it, the Nazi Party revoked his German citizenship rendering him stateless. This offer at the IISc was timely and suited Born. Born came with his wife Heidi, and both settled well in Bangalore. Raman sought to make Born’s temporary post as Reader into a permanent post as Professor of mathematical physics at the IISc. A humiliating incident at the formal vote of the IISc Council to ratify Born’s appointment to the IISc led to Raman terminating his own role own as Director of IISc. The political manoeuvring to o
ust Raman had succeeded. It was the end product of “a group of antagonists that had been working for a year and a half to disgrace Raman.”[229] On 1 June 1937, he wrote to the Chairman of the Council saying that “having considered all the circumstances, I feel it would be best that I offer to terminate my contract of service with the Institute as its Director.” Raman was expected to remain the Director until 1948 but continued instead as a professor.

  There is no direct evidence of Raman playing a critical role in creating or nurturing the space programme in India. He declared in his characteristic forthright style that it was “nothing but sheer raving lunacy” to “shoot men into space and make them walk there.”[230] Speaking in 1966, he concluded that “it is militarism, very thinly disguised” and that the spaceflight was the “most sinister aspect of progress of science in the last 60 years.”[231] These comments, though they sound harsh and idiosyncratic, were made in the context of a lesser known space race between military and civilian factions in the US and USSR. The US Air Force sought approval for two overtly military manned space projects, the Dyna-Soar spaceplane and the Manned Orbiting Laboratory. Both were cancelled, one in 1963 and the other in 1969.