Nobel Prize Winners from India

Nobel Prize Winners from India – The Indian Nobel Laureates

Nobel Prize winners from India are with due respect enlisted below, these are great people from India who showed the world the untapped potential India has, even though it may not have facilities and luxuries at par with the likes of USA,Britain and other big social economies but the talent, hard work and skill here is unfathomed .

AMARTYA SEN (b-1933) : Prof. Amartya Sen is the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Economics for the
year 1998, becoming the first Asian to have been honored with the award. The Santiniketan-born
economist who is a pioneer in Welfare Economics has to his credit several books and papers on aspects of welfare and development. An economist with a difference, Prof. Sen is a humanist. He has distinguished himself with his outstanding writings on famine, poverty, democracy, gender and social issues. The ‘impossibility theorem’ suggested earlier by Kenneth Arrow states that it was not possible to aggregate individual choices into a satisfactory choice for society as a whole. Prof. Sen showed mathematically that societies could find ways to alleviate such a poor outcome.

SUBRAMANIAN CHANDRASHEKAR (1910-1995) : The Nobel Prize for Physics in 1983 was awarded
to Dr S. Chandrashekar, an Indian-born astrophysicist. Educated in Presidency College, Chennai, Dr. Chandrashekar happened to be the nephew of his Nobel forbear, Sir C.V. Raman. He later migrated to the United States where he authored several books on Astrophysics and Stellar Dynamics. He developed a theory on white dwarf stars which posts a limit of mass of dwarf stars known also as Chandrashekar Limit. His theory explains the final stages of stellar evolution.

MOTHER TERESA (1910-1997) : The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Mother Teresa in 1979. Albanian parentage, Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu was born at Skopje, now in Yogoslavia. She joined the Irish order of the Sisters of Loretto at Dublin in 1928 and came to Kolkata in 1929 as a missionary, only to find the misery of the abandoned and the destitute. Concern for the poor and the sick prompted her to found a new congregation, Missionaries of Charity. Having become an Indian citizen, Mother Teresa served the cause of dying destitute’s, lepers and drug addicts, through Nirmal Hriday (meaning Pure Heart), the main centre of her activity. Her selfless service and unique devotion, not only to helpless fellow-Indians but also to the cause of world peace, earned her and India the first Nobel Peace Prize.

HARGOBIND KHORANA (b. 1922) : Hargobind Khorana was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine
in 1968. Of Indian origin, Dr Khorana was born in Raipur, Punjab (now in Pakistan). He took his
doctoral degree in Chemistry from Liverpool University and joined the University of Wisconsin as a
Faculty Member in 1960. His major breakthrough in the field of Medicine—interpreting the genetic
code and analyzing its function in protein synthesis—fetched him the Nobel Prize.

CHANDRASHEKAR VENKATARAMAN (1888-1970) : India’s first Nobel Prize for Physics was claimed in 1930 by the renowned physicist Sir C.V. Raman. Born at Thiruvanaikkaval near iruchirapalli in Tamil Nadu, Raman studied at Presidency College, Chennai. Later, he served as Professor of Physics at Calcutta University. Recipient of many honors and awards, including the title of ‘Sir’, Sir C.V. Raman received the Nobel Prize for an important optics research, in which he discovered that diffused light contained rays of other wavelengths—what is now popularly known as Raman Effect. His theory discovered in 1928 explains the change in the frequency of light passing through a transparent medium.

RABINDRANATH TAGORE (1861-1941) : Rabindranath Tagore was the first Indian ever to receive a
Nobel Prize. Popularly known as Gurudev, India’s Poet Laureate Tagore was born on 7 May 1861 in
Kolkata. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in recognition of his work Geetanjali, a collection of poems, in 1913. Tagore wrote many love lyrics. Geetanjali and Sadhana are among his important works. The poet, dramatist and novelist is also the author of India’s National Anthem. In 1901 he founded the famous Santiniketan which later came to be known as Vishwabharati University.

Other Nobel laureates having links to India

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
British writer, Rudyard Kipling wrote novels, poems and short stories — mostly set in India and Burma (now known as Myanmar). He was the 1907 Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature "in consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas and remarkable talent for narration, which characterize the creations of this world-famous author."

V.S. Naipaul (1932- )
British writer of Indian origin, Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature 2001 "for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories."

India has its own share of Nobel Prize winners over the decades in several fields. The Nobel Prize is the most respected award the world over and here is a list of those Indians who have won this award and made the country proud.

Rabindranath Tagore -Nobel Prize for Literature (1913)

Tagore was born in Calcutta. He was the first recipient of this award from India. In the year 1913, Rabindranath Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his work "Gitanjali".He was one of greatest poets of India and the composer of national anthem of India.


Sir Chandrasekhar Venkata Raman (C.V. Raman)-Nobel Prize for Physics (1930)

C V Raman was born in Thiruvanaikkaval, in the Trichy district of Tamil Nadu. He was the first Asian scientist to win the Nobel Prize.he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930 for his discovery of “RAMAN effect”.Raman effect is useful in the study of molecular energy levels, structure development, and multi component qualitative analysis.

Mother Teresa (1910 – 1997) -Nobel Prize for peace (1979)

She was the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in the year 1979. This was in recognition for the path breaking efforts to help the poor and underprivileged people through the establishment of the Missionaries of Charity, Calcutta,India.



Dr. Amartya Sen – Nobel Prize for Economics (1998)

Amartya Sen was born in Bolpur, in West Bengal in 1933. He was honored with the Nobel Prize in 1988 for his work in Welfare economics. Sen is best known for his research on famines, his work on women-- the attention he has drawn to their unequal status in the developing world, and his calls for gender-specific aid programs.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan –Nobel Prize for Chemistry (2009)

Born in Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu in 1952.He was awarded Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2009. He is a structural biologist who received the Nobel Prize for his studies in the structure and function of the ribosome.

Dr. Har Gobind Khorana –Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology (1968)

He was born in 1922 in Raipur in Punjab of eastern Pakistan. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1968 for producing the first man-made gene in his laboratory in the early seventies. His discovery won him the Nobel Prize sharing it with Marshall Nuremberg and Robert Holley for interpreting the genetic code and analyzing its function in protein synthesis.

Dr. Subramanyan Chandrasekhar – Nobel Prize for physics (1983)

He was born on October 19, 1910 in Lahore, India (now part of Pakistan) in a Tamil hindu family. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1983 for Physics. He was recognized for his theoretical studies of the physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of stars.He received this award jointly with Wilfred Alfred Fowler for their collaborative research work. Chandrasekhar’s is also known as the nephew of another legendary scientist and Nobel laureate, Sir C.V. Raman.

V.S. Naipaul – Nobel Prize for Literature (2001)

He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001. Born to Indian parents in 1932 in Trinidad & Tobago.Naipaul was recognized for his extensive works in English Literature. He is well known not only for his indomitable command over the use of the English Language but also for his vivid and descriptive stories.

Other Nobel Prize Laureates related to India

Sir Ronald Ross –Nobel Prize for Physiology (1902)

He was a Scottish physician who was born in Almora in India in 1857. Though he finished his education in England, Ross had also spent a number of years in India while he was making progress in his search for his discovery of the malarial parasite and its prevention. He was awarded by Nobel prize in 1902 for his work on malaria.

Rudyard Kipling –Nobel Prize for Literature (1907)

He was born in 1865 in Bombay. He is regarded as an innovator in the art of short stories. In 1907 Rudyard Kipling won the Nobel Prize in Literature for his original imagination and ideas as a writer of several literary works. He is best known for his book “The Jungle book”

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