An Indian-origin economist winning a Nobel Prize naturally boosts feel-good sentiments across the country. Bengalis, who account for both of India's prizes for economics－not to mention the only one for literature－will be particularly chuffed when Abhijit Banerjee, the 2019 winner, visits his home in Kolkata shortly.
However, the drought in science Nobels for Indians, only one in the last 35 years, raises the uncomfortable question of India's standing in science research. Of India's nine Nobels since Rabindranath Tagore was awarded for Literature in 1913, four are for science. Three of the laureates were Tamilians and three were US citizens at the time they received the prize – as indeed, is Bannerjee.
Venkataraman Ramakrishnan became the first PIO to win a Nobel for Chemistry in 2009, a quarter-century after astrophysicist Subramanyan Chandrasekhar. A quarter-century before that, Har Gobind Khurana had been awarded for Medicine–the first Nobel for Independent India. C V Raman was the only Indian scientist to get the award during the British Raj.
This is not to imply that the number of Nobels is in itself an indication of a country's progress in science. At least three Indian scientists who did ground-breaking work－Meghnad Saha, Satyendra Nath Bose and Homi J Bhabha－were nominated for Nobels, but did not receive them. Many more, including women scientists, weren't even nominated.
The subjectivity of the awards is well-established. Indeed, it has been suggested that the Nobel is more about overlooking seminal work than recognizing it. More so, when breakthroughs are a result of collaborative work, rather than individual effort. There are examples of certain team members being cherry-picked for recognition and others ignored. Politics, prejudice and blinkered perspectives have been big influencers.
That said, there is no gainsaying the fact that in India, science research is considered an also-ran career option, unless of course, it leads to foreign shores and US/EU citizenship. Hampered by lack of funding and infrastructure and bureaucratic approaches, India's best and brightest have always beaten a path to the west.
We have forgotten the transformative impact that Indian scientists had on the world in the late 19th and early 20th century. The quarter-century from 1885 to 1910 saw the birth of several brilliant scientific minds, who went on to change the way we look at the world and achieved global recognition.
Satyanendra Nath Bose, born in 1894, did seminal work on quantum physics in the 1920s and received more recognition than a Nobel could confer. Mention Albert Einstein and nine of ten schoolchildren will respond “E=mc2”. Mention Satyendra Nath Bose and the physics nerds among them will reply “bosons” (yes, the famous 'God particle' or Higgs Boson, is named after him). The two great minds of the 20th century are inextricably linked in the 'Bose-Einstein condensate' and 'Bose-Einstein statistics'.
Physicist Meghnad Saha, born in 1893, is best known for the 'Saha ionization equation' and physicist C V Raman, born in 1888, for the 'Raman effect', which eventually led to a Nobel in 1930 –the first for an Asian. They were preceded by and in Saha's case taught, by Jagdish Chandra Bose, born in 1858 and celebrated for his contributions to electronics and biophysics. Then there was paleobotanist Birbal Sahni, born in 1891, the first Indian botanist to be elected Fellow of the Royal Society.
In 1887, Srinivas Ramanujan, the self-taught mathematician, extraordinary even among geniuses, was born. Had there been a Nobel prize for Mathematics, he would most assuredly have won it. He is now something of a popular culture icon, celebrated in books and cinema worldwide.
Physicist S Chandrasekhar was born in 1910 and is best known for his spectacular advances in the understanding of stellar structure and evolution. He became a legend in the world of astrophysics and is immortalized by the 'Chandrasekhar limit', which describes the maximum mass of a white dwarf star. He was given the Nobel only in 1983, in recognition of his early work.
Homi Jehangir Bhabha, the nuclear physicist, born in 1909, worked with legendary quantum physicist Niels Bohr and is best known for the 'Bhabha scattering'. The moving force behind the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, he is regarded as the inspiration behind India's nuclear programme.
In those 25-odd years, at a time when education was far less accessible than it is now, India produced pathbreaking scientists. More than a century has passed and science just might be coming back into vogue. Indian-origin scientisits are increasingly involved in cutting-edge research at home and abroad and every year, are elected to the Royal Society of London, the world's premier scientific institution. At home, the Infosys Science Foundation celebrates achievements in Indian science.
The writer is a senior journalist with 35 years of experience in working with major newspapers and magazines.
She is now an independent writer and author.
