Tagore, Satyarthi And 8 Other Nobel Winners Who Have Made India Proud
The Indian Connection
Ever since, nine other laureates with an India connection have been conferred the prestigious award in various categories, Abhijit Banerjee being the latest.
There were a few famous names who were nominated several times, but failed to bag the award. While Indian poet Sri Aurobindo was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1943 and 1950, the committee had considered Mahatma Gandhi for the Peace Prize five times in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947 & 1948 (days before his assassination).
Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel had drafted a will in 1895 where he reserved a large part of his estate to establish Nobel Prizes after concerns of how the world would remember him. He wanted the awards to be given to individuals (based on their achievements), annually, despite their nationality. He died in 1896.
It took nearly five years for the committee to set up, and the first set of awards for Physiology or Medicine, Chemistry, Literature, Physics and Peace were awarded in 1901. After 67 years, Sweden's central bank with donation from donation from the Nobel Foundation, established the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel in 1968.
Here's a look at all the Indians who brought honour to the nation.
While he originally wrote in Bengali, Tagore reached out to a wider audience in the West with his translation of poetry that conveyed 'the peace of the soul in harmony with nature'. The Swedish academy, on its website, says that 'Tagore's writing is deeply rooted in both Indian and Western learning traditions'.
Born in 1861, the Calcutta-born writer was well known for fiction in the form of poetry, songs, stories, dramas, and it included portrayals of people's lives, literary criticism, philosophy and social issues.
Tagore was home-schooled, but went to England for formal education. However, he didn't complete his studies there. His inclination towards humanity and social reforms increased when he started managing the family estates. He often participated in the Indian nationalist movement, and Mahatma Gandhi was his dear friend. The then British Government in 1915 honoured Tagore with knighthood, but he returned it within a few years as a sign of protest against British policies in the country.
He passed away in 1941 at the age of 80.
Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman
Born in 1888, the Tiruchirappalli-born scientist's discovery helped other researchers analyse different types of material using his scattering of light phenomenon.
In 1928, Venkata Raman found out that light spreads in different directions when light meets particles that are smaller than its wavelength. He further established that a small portion of the scattered light acquires other wavelengths than that of the original light because some of the incoming photons' energy can be transferred to a molecule, giving it a higher level of energy.
When he received the award, he was working with the Calcutta University. At 82, he passed away in Bangalore.
Har Gobind Khorana
In the 1950s, it was established that genetic information is transferred from DNA to RNA, to protein. One sequence of three nucleotides in DNA corresponds to a certain amino acid within a protein. In order to crack the genetic code, Marshall Nirenberg discovered the first piece of the puzzle. The remain part of the study was carried out in the following year.
Born in 1922, the Raipur-based built different RNA chains with the help of enzymes, which further helped him to produce proteins using these enzymes. The amino acid sequences of these proteins then solved the rest of the puzzle.
During his research, Khorana was a part of the Wisconsin University in Madison. He spent his last years in Concord, Massachusetts, and passed away in 2011.
Also known as Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, she had a calling at the age of 12. After coming to India, she decided to serve the poor as she lived amongst them.
After founding Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, she, along with her helpers, built homes for orphans, nursing homes for lepers and hospices for the terminally ill. Her organisation provided aid in other parts of the world.
While she was appreciated worldwide, she also faced criticism as the people suffering in the hospices were refused pain relief, but Mother Teresa got hospital treatment. She also had conservative views on abortion.
She became the spokesperson for the Vatican. Her canonisation took place in 2003, and Pope Francis declared her a saint in 2016.
Chandrasekhar was born in 1910 when Lahore (now in Pakistan) was a part of India. During the affiliation at the time of the award, he was a part of Chicago University in Illinois.
It is common knowledge that stars form clouds of gas and dust in the universe. When gravity pulls these clouds, energy is released in the form of heat. With the rising temperature, the atomic nuclei inside the stars start reacting. Chandrasekhar started working on his theories of the process stars subsequently undergo in 1930s. In his research, he explained how a star turns into a white dwarf when the hydrogen fuel of stars (of a certain size) begins to run out. His theory suggested that the star further collapses into a compact star known as a white dwarf.
During his award, he was with Trinity College, Cambridge in United Kingdom. He researched on fundamental problems in welfare economics, important resources in a community, and ways to divide them.
Sen's research focused on the value of values in collective decision-making, and ways in which welfare and poverty can be measured. The Swedish academy, on its website, wrote that Sen's efforts stem from his interest in questions of distribution and, in particular, the lot of society's poorest members. Sen also included famines in his studies to create a deeper understanding of the economic reasons behind them and poverty.
In 1933, Sen was born in Santiniketan, West Bengal, and studied in Dhaka (now in Bangladesh) where his father was a professor of chemistry. After completing his studies from Kolkata and Cambridge University, he got his PhD in 1959. He also held professorships in India, Oxford and Cambridge universities in UK, and Harvard University in US.
He is currently married to Emma Rothschild. Before Rothschild, he was married to Eva Colorni for 7 years and Nabaneeta Dev Sen for 18 years. He has two children from each of his previous marriages.
Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul
While he was born in Trinidad in 1932, he belongs to an Indian descent. According to the Nobel Prize website, the author's descendant had moved to India to work as indentured labourers in cocoa plantations of Trinidad. He later moved to UK after receiving an Oxford scholarship, and became a citizen of that country.
Before this Nobel, Naipaul was felicitated with the 1971 Booker Prize for his novel 'In a Free State', and Trinidad and Tobago's highest honour - Trinity Cross - in 1989. Britain also awarded his with knighthood in 1990.
Naipaul was married to Patricia Ann Hale for 41 years who succumbed to cancer. Two months after her death, he married Pakistani journalist Nadira Alvi, 21 years younger than him.
Known for his works of fiction and nonfiction in English, Naipaul passed away last year in August.
Born in 1952, he was working with MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge when he received the honour.
Vital functions of an organism are managed by complex protein molecules produced in cells' ribosomes. Ribosome is a molecular machine that is found in living cells' cytoplasm which synthesises proteins. Along with other researchers, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan used x-ray crystallography in 2000 to determine the structure of ribosomes, which is made up of hundreds of thousands of atoms. Among other applications, Nobel Prize website mentioned that Ramakrishnan's research has been vital in production of antibiotics.
He grew up in a family of academics. While his father, CV Ramakrishnan, got his postdoctoral fellowship in Madison, Wisconsin, his mother, R Rajalakshmi, obtained a McGill University fellowship to do PhD in psychology, which she finished in 18 months.
Born in 1954, he taught children in Vidisha, a small town in Madhya Pradesh, where he grew up. He had acquired his degree in electrical engineering, but decided to be a teacher. In 1980, he left teaching and founded 'Bachpan Bachao Andolan', an organisation that worked towards freeing children from slave-like conditions. He has been active for the fight against child labour and children's rights to education in a wide range of other organisations.
To achieve a peaceful world, following the tradition of Mahatma Gandhi, the Indian activist has been working towards ending child labour, exploitation, and encouraging them to attend school. He has also contributed to the development of international conventions on the rights of children, according to the Swedish academy.
As a member of UNESCO body, he works towards providing 'Education for All'. After his Nobel win, he made it to the Fortune 'World's Greatest Leaders' list in 2015.
Satyarthi is married to Sumedha, and has two children - a son and daughter.
Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee
He shared the prestigious global award with his economist-wife, Esther Duflo, and another US-based economist, Michael Kremer. The Swedish academy announced 2019 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel for the economists’ experimental approach to alleviating global poverty.
Born in 1961, the half-Bengali, half-Konkani economist lived his early life in West Bengal, and studied from the University of Calcutta. Later, he receieved his post-graduation degree in Economics from New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University in 1983. He went on to obtain a PhD in Economics from the Harvard University in 1988.
Currently, the 58-year-old, who is the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, shared his views on India's economic slowdown. He warned that the Indian economy is going into 'a tailspin' and his solution is for the government to focus on increasing demand rather than on deficits or stability.