Have you heard about India’s earliest known biochemist who discovered the function of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and the first cancer chemotherapy agent in the 1940s? Born in Bhimavaram, Andhra Pradesh in 1895, Subbarao joined the Madras Medical College for medical studies after his intermediate education.
Born on November 14, 1891 in West Punjab, Sahni was an Indian paleobotanist who studied the fossils of the Indian subcontinent. He was also a geologist who took an interest in archaeology. His greatest contributions lie in the study of the plants of India in the present as well as the historical context.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London (FRS) in 1936, the highest British scientific honor, awarded for the first time to an Indian botanist.
C R Rao is an Indian mathematician and statistician, who is noted for his contributions to the foundations of statistical theory and multivariate statistical methodology. C.R. Rao was born in 1920 in Hoovina Hadagali, Karnataka C.R. Rao worked towards setting up the Central Statistical Organization and the National Sample Survey Organization, due to which India has one of the world’s best national statistical systems.
Born on January 9, 1922 at Raipur village in West Punjab (now in Pakistan), Khorana was an Indian-American biochemist who shared the 1968 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Marshall W. Nirenberg and Robert W. Holley Khorana became the first to synthesize an artificial gene in a living cell. His work became the foundation for much of the later research in biotechnology and gene therapy.
Sálim Moizuddin Abdul Ali, born on November 12, 1896 in Mumbai, was an ornithologist and a naturalist. Salim Ali was among the first Indians to conduct systematic bird surveys across India and his bird books helped develop ornithology in the sub-continent.
Considered as the Father of India’s space programme, Vikram Sarabhai was born on on 12 August, 1919 in the city of Ahmedabad in Gujarat. He was instrumental in the setting up of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), when he successfully convinced the Indian government of the importance of a space programme for a developing nation after the launch of the Russian Sputnik
Vainu Bappu is considered the father of modern Indian astronomy, who largely contributed to the establishment of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics. His is a case of like father like son! Bappu was born in 1927 to a senior astronomer in the Nizamiah Observatory, Hyderabad