While three onetime Nobel prizewinners were planning to meet in California
(see p. 38), the committee of awards in Stockholm announced two new Nobel men. For their 1930 chemistry choice, they turned to Munich, as they have al ready done five times. This year they chose Herr Doktor Hans Fischer, 49, professor of organic chemistry at the Munich Institute of Technology. Outstanding physicist for the year they found in India, dignified Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, 42, professor at the University of Calcutta.
Dr. Hans Fischer achieved his first international fame two years ago. After 17 years of quiet research in his laboratory at Munich, he announced that he had succeeded in synthesizing hematin, the red iron core which carries oxygen into the blood (TIME, Jan. 7, 1929). He used pyrrol, a constituent of the common cure-all known as bone oil, subjected the colorless liquid to a complicated chemical treatment to obtain his results. The synthetic product he called hematine. Or ganic chemists are now experimenting with the substance, using it upon animals to de termine how doctors may employ it to cure human disease. Sir Chandrasekhara Ven kata Raman discovered in 1928 that when monochromatic light shines on a trans parent substance like quartz, chloroform, water, the wavelength of some of the scattered light is changed. Thus what was originally a pure yellow may con tain green, blue. This is now known as the Raman effect, has been used as a proof of the new quantum theory of light.
Sir Chandrasekhara, unlike Herr Doktor Fischer, is used to fame, has been about more. After his graduation from Presidency College, Madras, he served as an enrolled officer in the Indian finance department. In 1917 he went to the University of Calcutta to teach physics, research on light and sound. The British association chose him as lecturer in 1924, sent him to Toronto. Later that year he was invited to become research associate in physics at California Institute of Technology. At his home in Calcutta where he lives with his wife Lokasundarammal, he works hard, is busy being editor of The Indian Journal of Physics, honorable secretary of the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science.
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