How India missed another Nobel Prize
The highest honor one can achieve in the world is Nobel Prize. On different subjects, the Nobel Committee gives the prize every year after thorough checking of one’s work in a particular field. Since the prize is of immense importance to the human kind, people’s work is expected to be of the highest standard, original, innovative, creative, and pioneering. It is understandable that the toughest scrutiny is carried out by the committee through its various methods for reaching a point of conclusion. The choice of one or more than one person, organization, institute is made on subject wise and declared on the specified date of the winner.
Nobody would like to cross this system knowing that the utmost secrecy is maintained throughout the process and the probability of an error is rare. In spite of this rigorous procedure, we come across news that makes us feel remorseful for certain people, who at any rate should have been given this coveted prize, but never got it. Common people have little access to know what actually goes on behind the scene, and believe what they find in the media.
The prize is not limited to certain countries, as many third world citizens too have received it. However, the number of recipients from the developed western world far outreaches other countries of the world. I have no intention to bring in any accusation on any body, since my knowledge does not permit me to criticize on this subject matter easily. Yet, I feel that some outstanding scientists have been deprived of this distinguished prize for no fault of theirs. The recent news article in an authentic site rediff.com in the same headline as this review has confused me massively. The thought of nepotism, which never bothered me as far as Nobel Prize is concerned, engulfed me after reading this news item.
Few names of scientists have been mentioned in the news article. Jagadish Chandra Bose demonstrated the wireless signaling in 1895 for the first time in Calcutta (Presently known Kolkata) and London, but did not patent it. Is that the reason for not giving him the Prize, which instead was rewarded to Guglielmo Marconi in 1909 for wireless communication? Would it be too much to expect from the Nobel Committee that their scrutiny on a matter so sensitive ignored the demonstration of Bose in London in 1895? Sir Neville Mott, the recipient of the Physics Nobel Prize in 1978 acknowledged Jagadish Chandra Bose’s original work.
Satyendranath Bose on whose statistics papers sent to Albert Einstein gave birth to Bosons, and the Bose-Einstein statistics was ignored, although three Nobel Prizes were awarded on the foundation of Bose statistics.
What explanation the Nobel Committee has on these pioneering works?
In the recent times, G. N. Ramachandran was deprived of Nobel Prize for his work on bio-molecular structures, particularly the triple helical structure of collagen.
E. C. George Sudarshan is another example of bypassing by awarding physics Nobel Prize in 2005 to Roy Glauber on Quantum Optics and Coherence.
The astonishing advancement in the field of communication was possible because of the invention of fibre optics. This year the Swedish Academy named Charles K. Kao for obtaining the transmission of light in fibres for optical communication. The academy, here too, has ignored the original work of an Indian Narendra Singh Kapani, who had been named one of the heroes of the 20th Century in 1999 by the Fortune magazine. Not only this, he was also considered as the father of the Fibre Optics in the length and breadth of the world. He too coined the term Fibre Optics in the decade of fifties. How can we apprehend that the Swedish Academy of Nobel Prize did not have any knowledge of Narendra Kapani and others?
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