South Asia Daily

Dosas, Senator Kamala Harris, Mindy Kaling and I

Actress-writer Mindy Kaling, left, with Senator and presidential candidate Kamala Harris (Photo: Frame from video)

I am not a food fundamentalist in that I regard food purely as a utilitarian requirement. One gets hungry, one stuffs something vegetarian in the mouth, one chews and swallows and one is okay. That is my overarching food philosophy. I do not get anal about food like purists and connoisseurs do.

Even with this as the backdrop, I watched a PR video of actor and writer Mindy Kaling cooking a dosa or two for Senator and presidential hopeful Kamala Harris with some trepidation. Kaling, although born in America, traces her roots to Tamil Nadu in India, one of the hubs of the dosas. Harris, although born in America, also partially traces her roots from her mother’s side to Tamil Nadu.

In this season of frenzied campaigning in the Democratic primaries candidates have to do whatever it takes, including invoke the ever-reliable dosas. I refuse to tell you what dosas are made of. Just look it up. The video, such as these staged affairs tend to be, is staged cleverly enough so that it may not appear staged but it does. Kaling is about to embark on making dosas when Harris drops by.

The two great each other with effusion.

Harris quickly notes with two ‘Oh my gods’ how all the Indian spices on Kaling’s kitchen island are in the recycled Taster’s Choice coffee bottles, precisely the way her mother used to store them too.

The two then exchange some banter about that. “It is so funny,” says Kaling. “What is that!” wonders Harris. “Did they tell each other?” Kaling responds. Harris, “I don’t know.” The banter ends with a placement for Taster’s Choice for some reason. Sponsors, satisfied. Ecological conscience, checked.

Now on to the dosas. Wait but before that Kaling has to confirm how she should address the senator. As Senator Kamala Harris. No, she says because it is not in her birth certificate. Kamala is just fine but Kaling presses on “Because the Indian in me feels like my dad will watch this.” Harris, “Just don’t call me auntie.” A round of laughter, checked.

“What we are going to cook today is an Indian recipe because you are India. And I don’t know that everybody knows that,” Kaling says even as the senator keeps saying yes emphatically just in case it is not fully understood. “But I find that wherever I go and I see Indian people at the supermarket or on the street, everyone is like “You know Kamala Harris is India, right?” We are so excited about that you are running for president. So, we are both Indian but we are actually both South Indian,” Kaling says as Harris interjects to say, “You look like the entire one half of my family.”  Indian heritage, kind of checked.

Since some attention was paid to Harris’s Indian heritage, I feel called upon to point out that from her father’s side she is part Jamaican. Her father, Donald Harris is a respected professor of economics and is from Jamaica. In terms of nationality she is, of course, fully American like Kaling, both having been born here.

The video, with an eye firmly on its potential to go viral, does not appear to have gone viral going by the number of views as of this morning—a modest 154,140 as of writing this blog. I have no expertise to judge what such videos achieve, if anything, in terms of pushing the senator’s prospects in the primaries. It comes along with a deeply troublesome New York Times report how the Harris campaign “has unraveled’ and prospects of it ending being suggested. If that is indeed the case, I am fairly certain that partaking of a Mindy Kaling dosa is unlikely to help much.

Speaking of dosas, having lived in Bombay through the decade of the 1980, I had had the pleasure of eating some of the finest dosas anywhere. Mumbai is home to a remarkable variety of Udupi restaurants widely owned by the Shettys. Udupi restaurants famously serve some extraordinary dosas.

With my newspaper offices being in the Flora Fountain (now Hutatma Chowk—Martyrs Square) I was within walking distance of many Udupis, one being right below our office. It is possible that the true connoisseurs of dosas may scoff at me but I think in Mumbai one is really spoiled for choice. During my only visit to Bangalore and Bylakuppe via Mysore in the late 1990s I was left distinctly underwhelmed by the dosas that I was served. If that upsets you, please do not sue me. I have no money to pay you. I can offer two catheters instead.

A fifth force, X17 and a vast majority of our humdrum lives

You can live your entire life without knowing anything about science generally and physics particularly. A vast majority of us does and is none the unhappier for it. For instance, if you do not know what the four fundamental forces of nature are, you are not going perish. So if you do not know there might be a fifth force as well, you are not going to perish more. Conversely, if you do know something or everything about them, you will not become exempt from paying bills.

For the record, the four fundamental forces of nature are Gravity, the Weak Force, Electromagnetism and the Strong Force. So far physicists think that all that happens in the universe is because and can be explained by these forces. Now we are hearing again that there may be a fifth force and a new particle called X17. This X17 is supposed to be carrier of this fifth force. Like I said, not knowing that a new force may have been found will not in any way alter the humdrum lives of the vast majority.

If you read the paper by Attila Krasznahorkay, who led a Hungarian team of scientists, you would not understand a word if you do not have some grounding in physics. Let me illustrate how little you might understand by citing this opening paragraph of the paper: “Recently, we measured electron-positron angular correlations for the 17.6 MeV, and 18.15 MeV, Jπ = 1+ → J π = 0+, M1 transitions in 8Be and anomalous angular correlation was observed [1]. Significant peak-like enhancement of the internal pair creation was observed at large angles in the angular correlation of the 18.15 MeV transition [1]. This was interpreted as the creation and decay of an intermediate particle X17 with mass mXc 2=16.70±0.35(stat ) ±0.5(sys) MeV. The possible relation of the X boson to the dark matter problem and the fact that it might explain the (g-2)µ puzzle, triggered an enhanced theoretical and experimental interest in the particle and hadron physics community [2, 3].”

In simple terms, the speculation is that there may indeed be a fifth force as carried by X17, 17 being a mass of about 17 million electronvolts (MeV). If this is true, it an epic discovery. However, as we all know, ‘if’ is a bitch. I am not even remotely qualified to say anything reasonably intelligent about the potential discovery other than what I have said so far. However, I am eminently qualified to say that the existence or absence of a fifth force will have zero effect for a vast majority of us going through the motions of our humdrum lives.  

Discovering Harald Sohlberg courtesy of Sotheby's

Ripe Fields, Harald Sohlberg, at Sotheby's, Estimate between 1 million and 1.5 million pounds

Thanks to Sotheby’s I have discovered Harald Sohlberg, regarded as one of Norway’s greatest painters. It perhaps illustrates some of my sharpening visual intelligence that the moment I saw the first frame of a video of Sotheby’s about the upcoming sale of Sohlberg’s 1898 painting ‘Ripe Fields’, I mumbled ‘Munch’ to myself. Sure enough, as it turns out and as the video mentions at cue 2.00 Sohlberg, born six years after Munch, was compared to Edvard Munch throughout their lives.

In terms of their techniques, Munch was clearly very rapid in his brushstrokes while Sohlberg’s style is more deliberate and anchored. He does not seem to be in a hurry to finish like Munch. The result is rather calming images. It is no surprise that Sohlberg’s ‘Winter Night in the Mountains’ has become Norway’s most favorite work.

Munch’s works, although brilliant and my frequent reference points, have melancholic nerviness to them unlike Sohlberg’s which are deeply reassuring. Both were great artists but of very different temperaments.

When I saw Sohlberg's 'Winter Night in the Mountains' I was reminded of a pastel I had done awhile ago. 

Snow mountains--MC

Twilight drips on the horizon as if

Shafaq--MC

क्षितिज पर उषा यूँ टपक रही है

जैसे सूर्य अपनी ही गर्मी में पिघल गया हो

--मयंक छाया 

Twilight drips on the horizon as if

The sun has melted in its own heat

--MC

Incidentally, Shafaq means Usha in Urdu. 

Revisiting an aspect of Mumbai terrorist attacks on its 11th anniversary

On the 11^th anniversary of the November 26, 2008 terrorist attacks on Mumbai today, it strikes me that I had done extensive reporting of the Chicago-end of the story. In particular, of the trial involving two key figures in planning and execution of the harrowing attacks—David Coleman Headley (Formerly Daood Gilani), an American of part Pakistani origin, and Tahawwur Hussain Rana, a Canadian-Pakistani doctor who is a permanent resident of the United States. Both men are serving long sentences with Headley in for a 35-year sentence and Rana for 14 years. They were both sentenced in 2013 and have a long way to go to freedom, particularly Headley who must serve 85 percent of his sentence, which is about 30 years. Headley was 52 when sentenced and by the time he comes out he will be 82.

I wrote more than a dozen stories while reporting the trial of Headley and Rana from Chicago. A particular story that remains one of my favorites was the one wrote for the IANS wire on May 24, 2011. It offers details of the behind-the-scenes of the meticulous planning that Headley undertook before the attacks. I think it bears repeating if only as a cautionary tale about the extent to which the plotters of such sinister attacks go to ensure that they cause the most death and destruction.

There was another story that I had done on January 15, 2010, working out how much the Mumbai terrorist strikes would have cost its planners. It said this: "Establishing the cost of a major terrorist strike is always difficult because of the very covert nature of the business. What complicates it even more is that the preferred means of spending is almost always cash and the fact that the money is always drawn from multiple sources in multiple places. All that one can do is come up with an educated guess. Although the focus of the story below is not how much it cost to pull off the November 2008 Mumbai terror strikes, going by some numbers cited in it one can build up a rough budget. My conservative calculation tells me that it may have cost between $150,000 and $250,000 dollars. While some of the payments for equipment such as Thuraya satellite phones or registering domain names may have been made using credit cards, I am quite sure most of them were made in cash simply because cash leaves no paper trail."

May 24, 2011

By Mayank Chhaya

Chicago, May 24 (IANS) From how to pray without leaving the forehead indurated to the language of the train announcements at the Victoria Terminus station, the Pakistani planners of the Mumbai terror attacks paid meticulous attention to every detail, key plotter David Coleman Headley testified here.

The 50-year-old Pakistani American, who has pleaded guilty to all 12 charges of his involvement in planning the attacks, Monday offered a rare and extraordinary look inside the behind-the-scenes planning of an operation that left the Indian state practically paralyzed for three days starting Nov 26, 2008.

Under a plea bargain deal that requires him to cooperate fully with the federal prosecutors, Headley was expected to disclose all that he knows about the planning of the attack and he lived up to that obligation as Assistant US Attorney Daniel Collins carefully walked him through all major and minor details of the plot.

Headley’s attorney John Theis sat in the front row as his client answered questions in somewhat muffled tones even while disclosing remarkable details.

At one point as he discussed the kind of conversations he had had with his Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) handler Sajid Mir, Headley said he was even told how to pray in order to avoid "mihrab", the dark spot that devout Muslim men have on their foreheads because of the regular friction with the floor while praying.

The significance of this particular detail being that since Headley was to travel to Mumbai as a white American on a US passport, a mark like that on his forehead may arouse suspicion. As a result, he was advised to pray without touching his forehead to the ground.

Another seemingly minor but crucial detail that came to light during his four-hour-long testimony concerned the train arrival and departure announcements at Mumbai’s Victoria Terminus or Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus.

Headley told the court that he pointed out to both Sajid Mir and Major Iqbal, a shadowy figure reportedly belonging to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), that the announcements were made in English and Marathi. If the attackers did not know English, they could run into difficulty trying to find out when trains were arriving.

The overriding theme of prosecutor Collins’ questioning was to establish how closely the LeT, as represented by Sajid Mir, and the ISI, as represented by Major Iqbal were involved every step of the way, directing Headley what to do, when, where and how. So much so that Mir and Headley even discussed which Islamic denomination the latter’s fellow accused Tahawwur Hussain Rana belonged to as well as the need to win him over to the Salafi side of Islam.

Salafi adherents treat the companions of the Prophet Mohammed and the two immediate generations of Muslims that followed as their role model. Headley said LeT believes being a Salafi "is a prerequisite to jihad". He said he was told by Mir that only when Rana, a Pakistani military physician turned businessman at whose trial Headley testified, was made a Salafi can the real agenda be pushed.

Headley and Rana even debated who should declare jihad, whether a head of an Islamic state, as Rana believed, or someone else. Headley explained to Rana that a head of state was necessary only if it was to be "offensive" jihad but for "defensive" jihad of the kind currently underway it was not necessary.

Another striking disclosure that Headley made relates to the 2002 Muslim massacre in Gujarat in the aftermath of the killings of 50 Hindu pilgrims at Godhra. In fact, he cited that massacre as one of the triggers for him personally to get involved in the Mumbai attacks.

He said between 2002 and 2007 the LeT had received hundreds of letters from Muslims in Gujarat to help them. He even referred to an undercover video recording of a Hindu activist called Babu Bajrangi who had bragged about personally killing many Muslims.

The broad focus of his testimony was also on the number of times he met Major Iqbal and Sajid Mir to fine-tune plans for the Mumbai attacks as well as watch many video surveillance tapes of the city that Headley personally shot during his visits prior to the attack.

From discussing landing sites to the schedule of a major conference of defense industry which was to be organized at the Taj Mahal Hotel and from how to transfer attackers from a Pakistani boat to an Indian vessel to determining the nearest taxi stand, the three men discussed everything in great detail.

'The Crown' and I

The Crown (Courtesy: Netflix)

I concede that I do come across as reflexively anti-monarchist anywhere, particularly Britain because I come from India and that’s where the crown was complicit the most in its direct or indirect colonial plunder.

Speaking of the crown, I am almost done watching ‘The Crown’, the Netflix series about the British royal family against the backdrop of the events unfolding in Britain. Season 3 of the series deals with the period 1964 to 1977, the time during which I turned from 3 to 16. The last bit of information adds nothing of value or consequence to the post. It is irrelevant. 

I confess to a weird obsession while watching 'The Crown' or for that matter any program that deals with the British royalty or aristocracy. I always try to calculate in my mind how much the vulgar wealth and obscene opulence on display were originally funded by the plunder of India. Calculate not in precise numbers but generally in terms of what if India were not the ‘Jewel in the Crown’ for the British Empire. I grant that it’s a bit silly to look for signs of that plunder which I am sure are everywhere. There is a scene in a particular episode whose number I forget where one can see a replica of the iconic statue of the dancing Shiv right behind where the Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh (a rather effective Tobias Menzies) is working. That too intensified my fixation.

As a television series ‘The Crown’ is very well done from many different angles, including performances, though one may not feel any philosophical or emotional affinity for it. In fact, quite to the contrary. I have never understood what it is that the British royalty does for a living. Do they all just wake up every morning and expect the world to deferentially, obsequiously and unctuously genuflect before them and speak only when spoken to? There are so many absurd protocols to the way one is supposed to approach the Queen. A newly elected Prime Minister Harold Wilson (1916-1995), who had an unfounded reputation for being an anti-monarchist and, worse, a KGB agent, is instructed by a royal minder in some detail how to present himself to the Queen as he first meets her to prepare to form his government. There is a moment where he cannot decide whether he should cross his legs after sitting down lest it violated some ridiculous royal protocol. He keeps them uncrossed the first time around but in subsequent interactions manages to cross them as he becomes familiar with the Queen. Wilson served as Prime Minister from 1964 to 1970 and 1974 to 1976. 

In its own stiff upper lip ways ‘The Crown’ does address all the human frailties within the royal family that all of us, members of the swinish multitudes, are afflicted with. I am sure the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh fart as much as any of us, for instance.

Olivia Colman as the Queen, taking over from the younger self in earlier seasons where Claire Foy played the part, is brilliant. She wears the role with a great deal of finesse and assurance. It is a measure of how absurd people’s view become when it comes to the monarchy that much to the derision and chagrin of many the Daily Telegraph columnist Charles Moore had described Colman as someone with “a distinctly leftwing face” and whether that would be an obstacle to her portrayal. Moore wrote “It is something to do with looking slightly resentful and ironic at the idea of having to play a public role which satisfies the demands of others. The real live Queen has no such face – allowing almost no difference discernible in public between the role and the person. I hasten to add that I have no idea what Olivia Colman’s political views are. I just have a hunch, which I hope will be proved wrong.”

Colman, in fact, makes the Queen look credible even for those like me whose interest in the British royalty is admittedly desultory and view dismissive. Coming back to my original point about being fixated on how much of the family’s original wealth may have come from the plunder of India, I must refer you to a remarkable research by the economist Utsa Patnaik published by the Columbia University Press late last year. Based on some very detailed calculations from the data between 1765 and 1938 Patnaik says Britain extracted nearly $45 trillion from India. To give you a perspective, the United Kingdom’s is $2.825 trillion (2018), according to the World Bank. That makes what the British Raj plundered from India over 15 times the amount.

If India were to demand reparations commensurate with those number, the UK would be pushed into abject penury for the foreseeable future and along with it, the Crown with no money. Not that, it is ever going to happen but as the great Ghalib said,

हम को मालूम है जन्नत की हक़ीक़त लेकिन

दिल के ख़ुश रखने को 'ग़ालिब' ये ख़याल अच्छा है

(I am aware of the reality of paradise

But it is charming to entertain one’s heart with that fantasy, Ghalib)

Obsessing over Monet's waterlilies

 

I have been obsessing again over Claude Monet's waterlilies. So here. Pastels on paper.

Closely studying new information on Vikram lunar lander's crash

Since Dr. Bharat Thakkar and I joined hands to write a quick but substantive explainer on what fate India’s failed lunar lander might have suffered, we keep track of any new nuggets of information.

For some strange reason new information has come via Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) Jitendra Singh through a written reply to the country's parliament. He has been quoted as saying that “the reduction in velocity” during Vikram’s final phase of descent “was more than the designed value.” As a result of this the lander “hard-landed within 500 meters of the designated site.”

“The first phase of descent was performed nominally from an altitude of 30 km to 7.4 km above the moon surface. The velocity was reduced from 1,683 m/s to 146 m/s. During the second phase of descent, the reduction in velocity was more than the designed value. Due to this deviation, the initial conditions at the start of the fine braking phase (final phase below 7.4 km altitude) were beyond the designed parameters. As a result, Vikram hard-landed within 500 m of the designated landing site,” Singh said in a written reply in response to a question in the Lok Sabha, India’s lower chamber of parliament.

It is obvious that the written reply came from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) but was routed through Singh who is a sort of the point person in the PMO.

Dr. Thakkar has been studying these claims and working on his own calculations. One of his conclusions appears to be that there was no way it could have been just hard landing but in fact it had to have crash-landed. He also has doubts about the claim of the landing within 500 meters and is working out his calculations.

We will, of course, soon update that information in our slim book ‘Vikram Lunar Lander: Dead or Alive?” available on Amazon. The point of this post is to tell you to buy the book. I am even making it so much easier by linking it to Amazon so many times. 

Insects on Mars and I

Life on Mars is somewhat akin to crying wolf. It has been conjectured and/or announced so many times that when we finally do find it, the world might just go “meh.” Of course, finding life on Mars or anywhere, even if it is just microbial, would be profoundly altering and upending of human certitudes.

So when Dr. William Romoser, professor emeritus and an entomologist at Ohio University, definitively said yesterday that “There has been and still is life on Mars,” it was extraordinary to say the least. In a statement published on the university’s website but subsequently withdrawn Prof. Romoser was quoted as saying,  “There is apparent diversity among the Martian insect-like fauna which display many features similar to Terran insects that are interpreted as advanced groups — for example, the presence of wings, wing flexion, agile gliding/flight, and variously structured leg elements.”

The claim was definitive and specific with illustrations of actual photographs as incidentally captured by NASA’s Curiosity rover. He presented his findings on November 19 at the national meeting of the Entomological Society of America. The images, in his judgment, show life forms similar to reptiles and insects. What was remarkable about the findings was that the life that he talked about was both fossilized as well currently living.

Even by the assertions of the existence of life on Mars, this was right up there among the top claims. Like many others I too was stirred up by the announcement. I called Dr. Romoser’s office and left a voice mail in order to do a news story. Earlier yesterday I did see the official statement on Ohio University’s website but after I made the call and wanted to revisit it, the page had been removed. I tweeted at 10.22 a.m. yesterday this to the university, “@ohiou, Has the page announcing Entomologist William Romoser's claim that there is insect life on Mars been retracted? I am a journalist in Chicago trying to find it. It was there earlier this morning. But now that URL gives this.”

I also posted a screenshot that shows a squirrel that said far too cutely, if unintentionally ironically, “Aw. Nuts! We are having trouble locating the page you requested.’

At 11.30, somewhat restless at not hearing back from the university, I tweeted this: "I don't know if it means squirrels and not insects were found. I do not wish to be facetious but I do need a response for a news story. With a degree in physics I understand very well that claims can go wrong. That's why it is science and not religion.”

It was a couple of hours later that I received an email from a university spokesman saying this, “Mr. Chhaya, I saw your tweet to our University account regarding Dr. Romoser’s research. The story has been removed as the faculty member no longer wishes to engage with media regarding this research.”

Although that ended that particular exchange for me, I remain intrigued by it. Is it that Dr. Romoser does not wish to “engage with media” because the engagement is not serious enough? Or, is it that there is a deeper issue as to the claim itself? I do not know the answer to that.

As I mentioned in my tweet, claims can go wrong in science. There is nothing to be embarrassed about it. Even the redoubtable Albert Einstein had wrongly abandoned the cosmological constant to explain a stationary universe. My point is in science rights and wrongs are not to be confused with rights and wrongs in life generally.

I don’t know if there will be any more discussion on Dr. Romoser’s claim but it is not altogether inconceivable that they may turn out to be right, at least partially so. However, as of now they appear to have been withdrawn from the university’s site.

Alana Johnson, NASA's Public Affairs Officer, was quoted by FOX News as saying, “The collective general opinion of the large majority of the scientific community is that current conditions on the surface of Mars are not suitable for liquid water or complex life.”

Heralding Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, the first Indian to win Physics Nobel

Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman (Photo: nobelprize.org)

When a beam of light passes through a chemical compound, a fraction of it emerges from the other side in a slightly different or deflected direction. That happens because the beam occasionally runs into the compound’s molecules and gets bounced off its course. Since light is a bunch of photons, some of the photons that get deflected by the chemical's molecules and emerge in a different direction than the one it came in.

This sounds rather simple and intuitive now but in the 1920s—from 1923 onwards—it was not. Although in 1923 this deflection was theoretically suggested by Austrian physicist Adolf Smekal, it was not until Indian physicist Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman’s experiment in 1928 that the deflection and the emerging spectra were confirmed. The effect was promptly named as Raman Effect after him. Russian physicists Leonid Mandelstam and Grigory Landsberg had noticed the same effect before Raman but they did not publish their results much after Raman.

The result was Raman was awarded the 1930 Nobel Prize at age 42 only to be immortalized beyond his death today in 1970. The Raman spectra are used in both in qualitative and quantitative analyses because they reveal the structure and nature of the chemical medium they are produced by.

The 1930 Physics Nobel Prize announcement says, it was was awarded to “Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman "for his work on the scattering of light and for the discovery of the effect named after him."”

The official Nobel biography of Raman says the following:

His earliest researches in optics and acoustics – the two fields of investigation to which he has dedicated his entire career – were carried out while he was a student.

Since at that time a scientific career did not appear to present the best possibilities, Raman joined the Indian Finance Department in 1907; though the duties of his office took most of his time, Raman found opportunities for carrying on experimental research in the laboratory of the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science at Calcutta (of which he became Honorary Secretary in 1919).

In 1917 he was offered the newly endowed Palit Chair of Physics at Calcutta University, and decided to accept it. After 15 years at Calcutta he became Professor at the Indian Institute of Science at Bangalore (1933-1948), and since 1948 he is Director of the Raman Institute of Research at Bangalore, established and endowed by himself. He also founded the Indian Journal of Physics in 1926, of which he is the Editor. Raman sponsored the establishment of the Indian Academy of Sciences and has served as President since its inception. He also initiated the Proceedings of that academy, in which much of his work has been published, and is President of the Current Science Association, Bangalore, which publishes Current Science (India).

Some of Raman’s early memoirs appeared as Bulletins of the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (Bull. 6 and 11, dealing with the “Maintenance of Vibrations”; Bull. 15, 1918, dealing with the theory of the musical instruments of the violin family). He contributed an article on the theory of musical instruments to the 8th Volume of the Handbuch der Physik, 1928. In 1922 he published his work on the “Molecular Diffraction of Light”, the first of a series of investigations with his collaborators which ultimately led to his discovery, on the 28th of February, 1928, of the radiation effect which bears his name (“A new radiation”, Indian J. Phys., 2 (1928) 387), and which gained him the 1930 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Other investigations carried out by Raman were: his experimental and theoretical studies on the diffraction of light by acoustic waves of ultrasonic and hypersonic frequencies (published 1934-1942), and those on the effects produced by X-rays on infrared vibrations in crystals exposed to ordinary light. In 1948 Raman, through studying the spectroscopic behaviour of crystals, approached in a new manner fundamental problems of crystal dynamics. His laboratory has been dealing with the structure and properties of diamond, the structure and optical behaviour of numerous iridescent substances (labradorite, pearly felspar, agate, opal, and pearls).

Among his other interests have been the optics of colloids, electrical and magnetic anisotropy, and the physiology of human vision.

As an aside—and some of you might know this—it is rare that the Physics Nobel has been won by two members of a family. Raman’s nephew Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who as a 19-year-old produced the first proof of the existence of black holes, too won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1983. It is widely recognized that he should have won the Nobel Prize decades earlier for his work on black holes.

Raman was the first Indian to win the physics Nobel. Forty three years later his nephew did as well.