Sir C V Raman was born in Tiruchirapalli, Tamilnadu in 7th nov. 1888. He worked relentlessly in the field of light and discoverd a new phenomenon of light in 28 February 1928 and was awarded with Nobel prize in 1930 for ground breaking discovery of light scattering, which regarded as Raman effect. Well he was not the alone in this discovery, as an Austrian physicst Adolf Smekal described this phenomenon theoretically earlier in 1923 and two another physicst Leonid Mandelstam and Grigory Landsberg observed this in same year.
Not only light was the main stream of research for Sir Raman but also he was fond of acoustic research. One of his interest was to understand the physics of musical instruments.
What is Raman effect ? Well it could be understood as inelastic scattering of light when light incidents on a sample surface. If light assumed as cluster of photons, then when light incident on a surface then most of the photons get scattered with same energy ( wavelength and frequency) as of incident photon, which was proposed by Rayleigh and called Rayleigh scattering. But a miniscule part of that photons transfer or receive energy from the molecule of the material, therefore scattered with increased or diminished energy and eventually ended with increased or decreased frequency.
Raman effect is very feeble and for liquid it amounts 1/100000 of incidents rays.
Well, Raman effect is very useful for substance analysis. Raman effect is being used in Raman spectroscopy to study the molecules.
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