Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman (1888-1970), the Indian physicist. Work he produced on diffraction and sound secured him the professorship of physics at Calcutta. During his time there (1917-33) he discovered the Raman effect, set up the Indian Journal of Physics, became president of the Indian Science Congress, was knighted, and received the Nobel Prize for physics (the first awarded to an Asian). The Raman effect states that light scattered by molecules has lower and higher frequency components. Raman's discovery of this led to one of the first confirmations of quantum theory and gave a powerful method of analysing molecular structure (Raman spectroscopy).