The Interaction of Matter and Radiation: The Physics of C.V. Raman, S.N. Bose, and M.N. Saha: Part 2: Physics Highlights

Three extraordinary physics discoveries were made in colonial India, which did not have any tradition of research in modern physics: Saha ionization equation (1920), Bose statistics (1924), and Raman effect (1928). All three discoverers were founding faculty members of the new small physics department of Calcutta University, which started functioning in 1916. These discoveries were all on the general topic of interaction between matter and radiation. In Part 1 (published in Resonance , Vol.29, No.11, pp.1557–1571, 2024), we have described the social and intellectual environment in which these discoveries were made. Now, in Part 2, we shall first present a background of the revolutionary developments taking place in physics at that time. Then, we shall provide a non-technical account of the three discoveries and point out the kind of impact these discoveries had in the subsequent development of physics.