Nobel laureates of India
Encyclopedia : N : NO : NOB : Nobel laureates of India
The Nobel prize, instituted in 1901 annually honours outstanding contribution to literature, world peace and the various sciences. Six Indian citizens and people of Indian origin have been thus honoured to date.
Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was a poet, philosopher, educationist, artist and social activist. Hailing from an affluent land-owning family of Bengal, he received traditional education in India before going to England for higher studies. He abandoned his formal education and returned home, founding a school, Santiniketan, where children received an education in consonance with Tagore's own ideas of communion with nature and emphasis on literature and the arts.
In time Tagore's works, written originally in Bengali, were translated into English; the "Geetanjali" ("tribute in verse"), a compendium of verses, was widely acclaimed for its literary genius. In 1913, Rabindranath Tagore was awarded the nobel for literature. He was the first person of non-western heritage ever to be awarded a Nobel prize.http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3567535.stm
Tagore participated in the Indian independence movement in his own 'non-sentimental and visionary' way. In protest against the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre of 1919, he resigned the knighthood that had been conferred upon him in 1915. Tagore holds the unique distinction of being the composer of the national anthems of two different countries, India and Bangladesh.
Citation: "Because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West".
Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman
Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman (born 1888, died 1970) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for the year 1930. He had been knighted only the year before and worked extensively on acoustics and on light. He was also deeply interested in the Physiology of the Human Eye. A traditionally dressed man, he headed an institute that is today named after him - Raman Research Institute, Bangalore. His nephew, Subramanyan Chandrasekhar, an astrophysicist, won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1983, although as a US citizen.
Citation: "for his work on the scattering of light and for the discovery of the effect named after him".
Hargobind Khorana
Hargobind Khorana (born 1922), a person of Indian Origin, awarded the nobel prize for his work on genes. Having left India in 1945 itself, he became a naturalised US citizen in 1970's. He contines to head a lab in the Massachusetts Inst. of Technology, USA (MIT).
Citation: "for their interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis".
Mother Teresa
Mother Teresa was born in Skopje in 1910, then in Turkey. Toiling for years in the slums of Calcutta, the award itself was no great distinction for her. She saw her happiness in her work, and the smile in the people she served. She worked on bringing help to suffering humanity. She died in 1997. "This year the world has turned its attention to the plight of children and refugees, and these are precisely the categories for whom Mother Teresa has for many years worked so selflessly."Press Release: Norwegian Nobel Committee (1979)
No citation provided by the foundation on the website.
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1983.
Amartya Sen
Amartya Sen (born 1933) was the first Indian to get the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. He was given the prize for his works on welfare economics. Amartya Sen has made several key contributions to the research on fundamental problems in welfare economics. His contributions range from axiomatic theory of social choice, over definitions of welfare and poverty indexes, to empirical studies of famine. They are tied closely together by a general interest in distributional issues and a particular interest in the most impoverished members of society.Press Release: The Sveriges Riksbank (Bank of Sweden) Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for 1998 (14 October 1998) The 'impossibility theorem' suggested earlier by Kenneth Arrow states that it was not possible to aggregate individual choices into a satisfactory choice for society as a whole. Professor Sen showed mathematically,that societies could find ways to alleviate such a poor outcome.Website of Indian Embassy of Indonesia, http://www.eoijakarta.or.id/Indian_noble.html
Citation: "for his contributions to welfare economics".
V S Naipaul
A British writer, V(idiadhar) S(urajprasad) Naipaul better know as V.S. Naipaul was born in 1932 in Chaguanas, close to the Port of Spain on Trinidad, in a family of north Indian descent.
References
Note: All citations are taken from the official website of the Nobel Foundation, http://www.nobelprize.org
See also
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