International Indian Scientist Awards

Har Gobind Khorana: The Genetic Code Breaker and Nobel Laureate Har Gobind Khorana, an Indian -American biochemist, was a pivotal figure in unraveling the mysteries of the genetic code, the fundamental language of life. His groundbreaking work in the 1960s, conducted in collaboration with his team, elucidated how the sequence of nucleotides in DNA dictates the arrangement of amino acids in proteins. Key contributions and impact Decoding the Genetic Code:  Khorana's meticulous experiments helped establish the codon sequences of RNA that correspond to each amino acid, providing crucial insights into how genetic information encoded in DNA and RNA is expressed through protein synthesis. This work was instrumental in proving the triplet nature of the code, meaning three nucleotides (a codon) correspond to one amino acid. Chemical Synthesis of DNA and RNA: Khorana was at the forefront of chemically synthesizing DNA and RNA molecules with defined sequences. He developed methods for synth...

Janaki Ammal: The Botanist Who Changed Indian Agriculture Edavalath Kakkat Janaki Ammal:  India's pioneering botanist and agricultural revolutionary Edavalath Kakkat Janaki Ammal (1897–1984), commonly known as Janaki Ammal, was a trailblazing Indian botanist and plant cytologist whose contributions significantly shaped Indian agriculture and plant science. Her life and work are marked by scientific brilliance, unwavering dedication, and a fierce commitment to biodiversity conservation. Early life and education Born in Thalassery, Kerala in 1897, into a cultured and educated middle-class family. Her father, a sub-judge with a keen interest in natural sciences, fostered her early love for botany. Defying the societal norm of early marriages for women at the time, Janaki chose to pursue higher education, an uncommon path for women in India and worldwide during the early 20th century. She completed her Bachelor's degree from Queen Mary's College, Madras and an Honours degree i...

Meghnad Saha: The Astrophysicist Who Measured the Stars Meghnad Saha: the astrophysicist who measured the stars Meghnad Saha (1893-1956) was an Indian astrophysicist renowned for his groundbreaking work in thermal ionization and its application to understanding stellar spectra. He is best known for developing the Saha ionization equation, a crucial tool that transformed stellar spectroscopy from a qualitative classification method into a precise technique for quantitative measurements. This equation is still relevant in stellar physics today. Saha ionization equation Saha's equation, developed in 1920, relates the ionization state of a gas in thermal equilibrium to its temperature and pressure. It is derived by combining principles of quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics. This allowed astronomers to accurately determine the actual temperatures of stars based on their spectral classes, a groundbreaking achievement at the time. Applications Beyond its use in stellar astrophy...

When Einstein rescued Satyendra Nath Bose's rejected paper, changing quantum physics On the death anniversary of Satyendra Nath Bose, the man behind Higg's boson or the 'God Particle', we revisit how Einstein stepped in to save his rejected paper, leading to the Bose-Einstein statistics. Though Bose never won a Nobel, his work helped shape the field of quantum physics. On a typical day in 1924, Satyendra Nath Bose, a physicist from Kolkata, faced a disappointing setback. His paper on quantum statistics that introduced a novel way to describe particles of light (photons) had been rejected by a prominent journal. His paper treating particles as indistinguishable, challenging classical physics. It was a brand new concept, perhaps too bold for the time, and The Philosophical Magazine rejected it. IIndian Scientist Awards 2025! Visit: indianscientist.in/ Contact: indian@indianscientist.in Nomination Link: https://indianscientist.in/award-nomination/?ecategory=Awards&rca...

Biotechnology is just one of the many industries around the world that artificial intelligence (AI) is changing. With the rapid advancements in technology, the integration of artificial intelligence in biotechnology is opening up transformative possibilities in healthcare, agriculture, and industrial processes. By its very nature, biotechnology produces large and intricate datasets, whether they are related to cellular interactions, protein structures, or genetic sequences. AI is transforming the biotech industry by making processes faster, more accurate, and highly scalable in fields like genetic engineering, personalized medicine, agricultural biotech, and drug discovery. It used to take years of study, extensive knowledge, and trial-and-error experimentation to analyze such data. But the biotech sector is changing drastically as a result of AI and machine learning. AI speeds up innovation, improves the capacity to precisely interpret biological data, and provides scalable, predict...

India observes February 28 as ‘National Science Day’ to mark the discovery of ‘Raman Effect’ by Sir CV Raman on February 28, 1928, the discovery for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930. But what exactly is Raman Effect? Let’s try to understand Rayleigh scattering Before diving into the Raman Effect, it is important to first understand its background. It all started with the ‘Rayleigh scattering’, a theory proposed by British physicist Lord Rayleigh, in which he answered the most basic question: Why is the sky blue? His theory stated that when sunlight interacts with air particles, it gets scattered. Because light is made up of different colours, the degree of scattering depends on the wavelength of the colour. Since violet and blue colours have low wavelengths, they get scattered the most. But because human eyes are more sensitive to the blue colour, the sky appears blue. Rayleigh then argued that the blue colour of the ocean is the mere reflection of the blue c...