Professor Einstein at PasadenaSource: The Scientific Monthly, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Mar., 1931), pp. 284-285Published by: American Association for the Advancement of ScienceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/15047 .

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PROFESSOR EINSTEINF AT PASADENA

PROFF.SSOR F. HI. SEARES, PROFESSOR P. S. EPSTEIN, DR. WALTER MAYER ANI) PROFESSOR EINSTFIN.\

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THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE 285

PROFESSOR EINSTEIN AT THE MOUNT WILSON OBSERVATORY PROFESSOR EINSTEIN, DR. WALTER S. ADAMS, DIRECTOR OF THE OBSERVATORY, AND WILLIAMI

WALLACE CAMPBELL, DIRECTOR EMERITUS OF THE LICK OBSERVATORY AND PRESIDENT EMERITUS

OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.

SIR CHANDRASEKHARA VENKATA RAMAN, NOBEL LAUREATE

IN awarding the Nobel Prize in phys- ics for 1930 to Sir C. V. Raman, the Swedish Academy concurred with physi- cists the world over in appraising the discovery of the "Raman effect" as one of the most important achievements in physics in recent years.

As on some previous occasions, the award this time is made, nominally at any rate, for a single experimental re- sult of striking importance rather than for a high standard pf productivity maintained over a period of years. Again as on previous occasions, the par- ticular experiment to receive this signal recognition is a rather simple one-one wvhiclh might have been made with equip- ment at hand in almost any physical laboratory in the world at any time dur- ing the last forty or fifty years. Indeed, within a year of Raman 's announce- ment of his discovery, the effect was

verified and studied by more than forty investigators in countries other than India.

In its simplest form the experiment consists in irradiating a substance com- posed of molecules with monochromatic light, and observing the spectrum of the light which the substance scatters. Raman found that the scattered light comprises, in addition to a line of the same wave-length as the incident radia- tion, a few much fainter lines as well. which additional lines are in a sense satellites of the primary line, moving with it as a group through the spectrum when the wave-length of the primary radiation is altered.

In the first definitive experiment of this kind, Raman photographed the spectra of the radiation scattered by various organic compounds when illlu- minated by a part of the spectrum of a

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