Indian Nobel Laureates

Sir Rabindranath Tagore (1861 – 1941) – Won Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913 for his work titled “Gitanjali”. Tagore came from a wealthy Bengali family. He went abroad in 1877 to study law in England but soon returned to India. For a time he managed his father's estates and became involved with the Indian nationalist movement, writing propaganda. His characteristic later style combines natural descriptions with religious and philosophical speculation. Tagore drew on the classical literature of India, especially the ancient Sanskrit scriptures and the writings of Kalidasa. His prodigious output includes approximately 50 dramas, 100 books of verse (much of which he set to music), 40 volumes of novels and shorter fiction, and books of essays and philosophy. Tagore's best-known novels and poetry include The Gardener (1913), The Crescent Moon (1913), Songs of Kabir (1915), Cycle of Spring (1917), Fireflies (1928), and Sheaves (1932). Among his plays are The Post Office (1914), Chitra (1917), and Red Oleanders (1924). Philosophical works include Personality (1917), Nationalism (1917), The Home and the World (1919), The Religion of Man (1931), and Man (1932). His most important philosophical work is Sadhana: The Realization of Life (1913), which echoes the fundamental ideas inherent in sacred Hindu writings. In 1915 Tagore was knighted. In 1922, Santiniketan (abode of peace), the school he had founded at Bolpur in 1901, was expanded into the internationally attended Visva-Bharati Univ. The curriculum stressed social reform, international unity, and rural reconstruction. His Janaganamana (Thou Art the Ruler of All Minds) was adopted as the Indian national anthem.
Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman (C. V. Raman) (1888 – 1970) – Won Nobel Prize for Physics in 1930 for the discovery that when light traverses a transparent material, some of the light changes in wavelength, called Raman Effect. He was professor of physics at Calcutta Univ. from 1917 to 1933. In Bangalore he directed the Indian Institute of Science and, from 1946, the Raman Institute. In 1929 he was knighted.
Har Gobind Khorana ( 1922 - ) – Indian-born American biochemist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1968 with Marshall W. Nirenberg and Robert W. Holley for research that helped to show how the genetic components of the cell nucleus control the synthesis of proteins. Khorana's role was to devise the methods that led to the synthesis of well-defined nucleic acids, ultimately leading to the solution of the genetic code. Khorana was born on January 9, 1922 in Raipur, India into a poor family and attended Punjab University at Lahore and University of Liverpool, England, on government scholarships. He obtained his Ph. D at Liverpool in 1948. In 1952 he traveled to Vancouver, British Columbia, where he began working on nucleic acids. Eight years later he moved on to the Institute for Enzyme Research at the University of Wisconsin before finally settling, in 1970, as the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Biology and Chemistry at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Mother Teresa (1910 – 1997) – Won Nobel Prize for Peace in 1979 for helping thousands in and around Kolkatta (Calcutta) through her congregation, Missionaries of Charity. Of Albanian parentage, she went to India at 17, becoming a nun and teaching school in Calcutta. In 1948 she left the convent and founded the Missionaries of Charity, which now operates schools, hospitals, orphanages, and food centers worldwide. She became an Indian Citizen in 1948 and was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2003.
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910 - 1995) – Indian-born American astrophysicist who, with William A. Fowler, won the 1983 Nobel Prize for Physics by formulating the currently accepted theory on the later evolutionary stages of massive stars. He was born on October 19, 1910 in Lahore, India (now part of Pakistan). Chandrasekhar was one of ten children born to a civil servant and an intellectual mother who translated Ibsen's A Doll House into Tamil. He earned a B.S. in physics at Presidency College, Madras, and then went on to earn advanced degrees at Cambridge University, and a Prize Fellowship at Trinity College. Chandrasekhar joined the staff of the University of Chicago in1938. There he delved into such astrophysical subjects as stellar structure, the theory of white dwarf stars, and the mathematical theory of black holes. He became a U. S. Citizen in 1953. NASA renamed the Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility for him: the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, which helps astronomers better understand the structure and evolution of the universe.