The Indian Noble Prize winners we don’t know about
They are fierce, strong and capable individuals excelling in their field
An award recognizing the great minds in the field of Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace working towards protecting the mankind, Noble Prize is a highly revered and prestigious award. However, it is not just a single prize but five separate prizes that are awarded “to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind”.
A prize set as per Alfred Nobel’s – a Swedish chemist, engineer, and industrialist, most famously known for the invention of dynamite- will that was to bequeathed all of his “remaining realisable assets” to be used to establish five prizes, known as Nobel Prizes. Since 1901 when the first Nobel Prize was awarded, the world has seen astonishing brains coming to work. Interestingly, in 1968, a sixth prize was established in the field of Economic Sciences, known as The SverigesRiksbank Prize in Economic Sciences. In fact, India isn’t far in this list of noble people, so let’s take a look at some Indian Noble Prize winners.
Rabindranath Tagore
A poet, writer, songwriter and social reformer, Tagore was the first-ever Indian to receive a Nobel Prize for his remarkable work in Literature, in 1913. The Noble Prize described his work, “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 ChandrasekharaVenkata Raman
Raman was India’s first physicist to win a Nobel Physics Prize in 1930 for his ‘work on the scattering of light and for the discovery of the effect named after him’. The scientist’s discovery -that light spreads in different directions when it meets particles that are smaller than its wavelength – helped fellow researchers analyze different types of material using his scattering of light phenomenon.
Kailash Satyarthi
Satyarthi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, “for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people, and for the right of all children to education.” He works tirelessly towards providing Education for All and saving children from trafficking.
Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee
The Economist won the award with his French-American wife Esther Duflo and another American economist Michael Kremer for their “experimental approach to alleviating global poverty” in 2020.
HarGobind Khorana won Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on electron diffraction that he shared. Mother Teresa was the first Indian woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize for her service towards mankind. Economist Amartya Sen won the SverigesRiksbank Prize in Economic Sciences. A few others are Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, VS Naipaul and Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar.