Rezension

Rajinder Singh started his journey as Historian of Science by working on his Ph.D. thesis: “Nobel Laureate CV Raman’s work on Light Scattering”. Presently, he is working as a Post-doctoral Fellow in Physics Education, History and Philosophy of Science Research Group of University of Oldenburg, Germany. The monograph under review is the tenth volume in the series on Nobel Prize Winners/Nominees/Nominators from India. According to author: “There is not a single book which exclusively deals with Indian nominators and nominees in all five Nobel Prizes – Chemistry, Physics, Medicine, Literature and Peace. This book intends to fill the gap as it has been compiled in an attempt to find out: Who nominated Indians; and who was nominated by the Indians? Did Indian nominators prefer their own countrymen? How is the geographical distribution of Indian nominators and nominees within India”?

The author has taken lot of pains to collect and collate information extracted from archives of Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, and Norwegian Nobel Institute, Oslo. Until 1974, the procedure around the selection of the winners of Nobel Prizes was strictly confidential as described by Henry Nielsen in the Foreword of this volume. But in 1974, Nobel Foundation decided to grant access to all archival material relating to Prizes more than 50 years old. India was almost ignored by the Nobel Committee for many years as a serious contender for the Nobel Prize but the situation is surely going to change after publication of Rajinder’s monograph under review.

In the Introduction to this volume, the author mentions his modus operandi for writing this monograph. Tables 1 & 2 present the data on Nominees and Nominators, respectively. Surprisingly, India is ahead of all other developing countries of the world and occupies 20th position in both the Tables. USA has maximum number of nominees for Nobel Prizes in Table 1, while Germany is ahead of USA in number of nominators, who recommend names of nominees for the Nobel Prize. Indian contribution is rated modest by the author; India has won 12 Nobel Prizes, out of which only six are listed under India and the other six won by Indians working in other countries. I think this situation prevails in most of the developing countries, including China.

The monograph has been divided into 5 Sections based on each subject for sake of convenience. The Chemistry Nobel Prize section brings out many surprises. Out of a dozen Indian nominators, none has nominated any Indian for Nobel Prize in Chemistry except CV Raman, who nominated GN Ramachandran in 1964 for his brilliant work on Crystallography in structure determination. But he failed to win the Prize. In all ten Indian Chemists were asked to send proposals by the Nobel Committee and they nominated 23 foreign scientists, considering work of Indian colleagues not worth the Nobel Prize.

The situation in Physics has been much better. CV Raman won the Physics Nobel Prize in 1930 and he received ten nominations from abroad including some Nobel Laureates of Europe. That shows significance of his discovery which won him reputation in the international arena. However, when Nobel Committee asked two Bengali physicists to send their proposals for the Physics Prize in 1930, they ignored CV Raman and instead nominated MN Saha, another Bengali, for 1930 Physics Nobel Prize. If one wants to read between the lines, it clearly shows a cultural bias of the Bengali intellectuals! HJ Bhabha was nominated 5 times for the Physics Prize by a French nominator but he failed to make the grade. SN Bose was nominated three times but only by Indians. In my opinion, SN Bose deserved the Prize but his popularity was no match with that of CV Raman; although many Scientists have won Nobel Prizes working on his hypothetical ideas.

The situation in Physiology or Medicine Nobel Prizes resembles the one in Chemistry. No one could win the Prize despite the fact that L. Rogers was nominated eight times starting with first nomination in 1907. The only Indian who was nominated for Medical Prize was UN Brahmachari. However, two Indian born scientists, Ronald Ross (1902, UK) and Hargobind Khorana (1968, USA), have won this Prize.

Rabindra Nath Tagore won the Literature Nobel Prize in 1913 based on single nomination from UK. In all 8 nominees from India were nominated for Literature Prize but only Tagore was found suitable. The maximum number of proposals (48) were made for 14 candidates nominated for Peace Nobel Prize from India. However, none of the nominees was found suitable for the Prize, despite the fact that Mahatma Gandhi was considered the best bet for this Prize internationally. Author has written a book on this fascinating topic exploring all angles of the story of Mahatma Gandhi.

The monograph under review consists of 33 data Tables. The author took pains to classify data in a systematic way to remove some discrepancies in the listing of nominators from India under Pakistan and Bangladesh. If we consider the geographic distribution of Indian nominees and their Indian nominators, the credit definitely goes to Calcutta Presidency. Madras, Bombay, Allahabad and Delhi find some mention but Calcutta is head and shoulder above other Indian cities. The only nominator from Lahore in the undivided Punjab was Bawa Kartar Singh, a renowned chemist. So far as the India’s women nominators/nominees are concerned, there role is almost negligible. Considering the present scenario in Indian Universities, one hopes there will be better role to be played by Indian women in future.