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The Raman Effect as the physicist's tool
The significance of the Raman Effect was recognized quickly by other scientists. Professor R. W. Wood of Johns Hopkins cabled Nature to report that he had verified Raman's "brilliant and surprising discovery ... in every particular. It appears to me that this very beautiful discovery which resulted from Raman's long and patient study of the phenomenon of light scattering is one of the most convincing proofs of the quantum theory." Raman had also recognized that his discovery was important to the debate in physics over the new quantum theory, because an explanation of the new radiation required the use of photons and their change in energy as they interacted with the atoms in a particular molecule. Raman also knew that there was a more important result, remarking in his 1930 Nobel Prize address that "... the character of the scattered radiations enables us to obtain an insight into the ultimate structure of the scattering substance." In the first seven years after its discovery, the Raman Effect was the subject of more than 700 papers in the scientific literature, mostly by physicists who were using the technique to study the vibration and rotation of molecules and relating those phenomena to the molecular structure. Then, as noted by Raman biographer G. Venkataraman, there was a decline in interest, as "the first bloom of novelty had worn off and physicists were satisfied that they understood the origin of the effect." At the same time, chemists became interested in the Raman Effect as an analytical tool. In James Hibben's words, "The Raman Effect became the adopted child of chemistry."
The experiment |
The Raman Effect as the physicist's tool
The Raman Effect as the chemist's tool |
The laser and Raman spectroscopy
The life of Sir C.V. Raman |
Landmark designation |
Further reading and acknowledgments
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