The Most Famous

PHYSICISTS from India

This page contains a list of the greatest Indian Physicists. The pantheon dataset contains 851 Physicists, 14 of which were born in India. This makes India the birth place of the 13th most number of Physicists behind Switzerland, and Sweden.

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary Indian Physicists of all time. This list of famous Indian Physicists is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of Indian Physicists.

1. C. V. Raman (1888 - 1970)

With an HPI of 67.47, C. V. Raman is the most famous Indian Physicist. His biography has been translated into 103 different languages on wikipedia.

Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman (; 7 November 1888 – 21 November 1970), known as C. V. Raman, was an Indian physicist known for his work in the field of light scattering. Using a spectrograph that he developed, he and his student K. S. Krishnan discovered that when light traverses a transparent material, the deflected light changes its wavelength. This phenomenon, a hitherto unknown type of scattering of light, which they called "modified scattering" was subsequently termed the Raman effect or Raman scattering. Raman received the 1930 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery and was the first Asian and the first non-White to receive a Nobel Prize in any branch of science. Born to Tamil Brahmin parents, Raman was a precocious child, completing his secondary and higher secondary education from St Aloysius' Anglo-Indian High School at the age of 11 and 13, respectively. He topped the bachelor's degree examination of the University of Madras with honours in physics from Presidency College at age 16. His first research paper, on diffraction of light, was published in 1906 while he was still a graduate student. The next year he obtained a master's degree. He joined the Indian Finance Service in Calcutta as Assistant Accountant General at age 19. There he became acquainted with the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS), the first research institute in India, which allowed him to carry out independent research and where he made his major contributions in acoustics and optics. In 1917, he was appointed the first Palit Professor of Physics by Ashutosh Mukherjee at the Rajabazar Science College under the University of Calcutta. On his first trip to Europe, seeing the Mediterranean Sea motivated him to identify the prevailing explanation for the blue colour of the sea at the time, namely the reflected Rayleigh-scattered light from the sky, as being incorrect. He founded the Indian Journal of Physics in 1926. He moved to Bangalore in 1933 to become the first Indian director of the Indian Institute of Science. He founded the Indian Academy of Sciences the same year. He established the Raman Research Institute in 1948 where he worked to his last days. The Raman effect was discovered on 28 February 1928. The day is celebrated annually by the Government of India as the National Science Day.

2. Satyendra Nath Bose (1894 - 1974)

With an HPI of 65.00, Satyendra Nath Bose is the 2nd most famous Indian Physicist. His biography has been translated into 77 different languages.

Satyendra Nath Bose (; 1 January 1894 – 4 February 1974) was an Indian theoretical physicist and mathematician. He is best known for his work on quantum mechanics in the early 1920s, in developing the foundation for Bose–Einstein statistics and the theory of the Bose–Einstein condensate. A Fellow of the Royal Society, he was awarded India's second highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan, in 1954 by the Government of India. The class of particles that obey Bose statistics, bosons, was named after Bose by Paul Dirac. A polymath, he had a wide range of interests in varied fields, including physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, mineralogy, philosophy, arts, literature, and music. He served on many research and development committees in India after independence.

3. Anna Mani (1918 - 2001)

With an HPI of 60.75, Anna Mani is the 3rd most famous Indian Physicist. Her biography has been translated into 29 different languages.

Anna Mani (23 August 1918 – 16 August 2001) was an Indian physicist and meteorologist. She retired as the Deputy Director General of the Indian Meteorological Department and also served as a visiting professor at the Raman Research Institute. Mani made contributions to the field of meteorological instrumentation, conducted research, and published numerous papers on solar radiation, ozone, and wind energy measurements. Anna Mani's work in meteorology remain impactful and valuable to today's society. In fact, Mani's visions and work allowed India to become a world leader in harnessing wind power today. Her meteorological innovations expanded India's scientific field as well as the country's development post-independence. But most importantly, Anna Mani is an inspiration for many young women to pursue their dream despite the societal limits placed on their identities. Mani not only held a position in a male dominated field, she was also able to inspire a team of men to work with her. This paved the path for many future female scientists and showed the world that girls can be more than caregivers. As Anna Mani once stated, "Me being a women had absolutely no bearing on what I chose to do with my life.”

4. Abdul Qadeer Khan (1936 - 2021)

With an HPI of 60.19, Abdul Qadeer Khan is the 4th most famous Indian Physicist. His biography has been translated into 40 different languages.

Abdul Qadeer Khan, ( AHB-dəl KAH-deer KAHN; Urdu: عبد القدیر خان; 1 April 1936 – 10 October 2021), known as A. Q. Khan, was a Pakistani nuclear physicist and metallurgical engineer who is colloquially known as the "father of Pakistan's atomic weapons program". An émigré (Muhajir) from India who migrated to Pakistan in 1952, Khan was educated in the metallurgical engineering departments of Western European technical universities where he pioneered studies in phase transitions of metallic alloys, uranium metallurgy, and isotope separation based on gas centrifuges. After learning of India's "Smiling Buddha" nuclear test in 1974, Khan joined his nation's clandestine efforts to develop atomic weapons when he founded the Khan Research Laboratories (KRL) in 1976 and was both its chief scientist and director for many years. In January 2004, Khan was subjected to a debriefing by the Musharraf administration over evidence of nuclear proliferation handed to them by the Bush administration of the United States. Khan admitted his role in running a nuclear proliferation network – only to retract his statements in later years when he leveled accusations at the former administration of Pakistan's Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in 1990, and also directed allegations at President Musharraf over the controversy in 2008. Khan was accused of selling nuclear secrets illegally and was put under house arrest in 2004. After years of house arrest, Khan successfully filed a lawsuit against the Federal Government of Pakistan at the Islamabad High Court whose verdict declared his debriefing unconstitutional and freed him on 6 February 2009. The United States reacted negatively to the verdict and the Obama administration issued an official statement warning that Khan still remained a "serious proliferation risk". On account of the knowledge of nuclear espionage by Khan and his contribution to nuclear proliferation throughout the world post 1970s, and the renewed fear of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of terrorists after the September 11 attacks, former CIA Director George Tenet described Khan as "at least as dangerous as Osama bin Laden". After his death on 10 October 2021, he was given a state funeral at Faisal Mosque before being buried at the H-8 graveyard in Islamabad.

5. Homi J. Bhabha (1909 - 1966)

With an HPI of 56.98, Homi J. Bhabha is the 5th most famous Indian Physicist. His biography has been translated into 43 different languages.

Homi Jehangir Bhabha, FNI, FASc, FRS(30 October 1909 – 24 January 1966) was an Indian nuclear physicist who is widely credited as the "father of the Indian nuclear programme". He was the founding director and professor of physics at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), as well as the founding director of the Atomic Energy Establishment, Trombay (AEET) which was renamed the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in his honour. TIFR and AEET served as the cornerstone to the Indian nuclear energy and weapons programme. He was the first chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission and secretary of the Department of Atomic Energy. By supporting space science projects which initially derived their funding from the AEC, he played an important role in the birth of the Indian space programme. Bhabha was awarded the Adams Prize (1942) and Padma Bhushan (1954), and nominated for the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1951 and 1953–1956. He died in the crash of Air India Flight 101 in 1966, at the age of 56. The mysterious circumstances of his death has led to the rise of several conspiracy theories claiming he was assassinated.

6. Vikram Sarabhai (1919 - 1971)

With an HPI of 54.08, Vikram Sarabhai is the 6th most famous Indian Physicist. His biography has been translated into 32 different languages.

Vikram Ambalal Sarabhai (12 August 1919 – 30 December 1971) was an Indian physicist and astronomer who initiated space research and helped to develop nuclear power in India. Often regarded as the "Father of Indian space program", Sarabhai was honored with Padma Bhushan in 1966 and the Padma Vibhushan (posthumously) in 1972.

7. Jayant Narlikar (b. 1938)

With an HPI of 51.64, Jayant Narlikar is the 7th most famous Indian Physicist. His biography has been translated into 33 different languages.

Jayant Vishnu Narlikar (born 19 July 1938) is an Indian astrophysicist and emeritus professor at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA). He developed with Sir Fred Hoyle the conformal gravity theory, known as Hoyle–Narlikar theory. It synthesises Albert Einstein's theory of relativity and Mach's principle. It proposes that the inertial mass of a particle is a function of the masses of all other particles, multiplied by a coupling constant, which is a function of cosmic epoch.

8. Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis (1893 - 1972)

With an HPI of 51.14, Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis is the 8th most famous Indian Physicist. His biography has been translated into 26 different languages.

Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis OBE, FNA, FASc, FRS (29 June 1893– 28 June 1972) was an Indian scientist and statistician. He is best remembered for the Mahalanobis distance, a statistical measure, and for being one of the members of the first Planning Commission of free India. He made pioneering studies in anthropometry in India. He founded the Indian Statistical Institute, and contributed to the design of large-scale sample surveys. For his contributions, Mahalanobis has been considered the Father of statistics in India.

9. Tom Kibble (1932 - 2016)

With an HPI of 45.97, Tom Kibble is the 9th most famous Indian Physicist. His biography has been translated into 20 different languages.

Sir Thomas Walter Bannerman Kibble (; 23 December 1932 – 2 June 2016) was a British theoretical physicist, senior research investigator at the Blackett Laboratory and Emeritus Professor of Theoretical Physics at Imperial College London. His research interests were in quantum field theory, especially the interface between high-energy particle physics and cosmology. He is best known as one of the first to describe the Higgs mechanism, and for his research on topological defects. From the 1950s he was concerned about the nuclear arms race and from 1970 took leading roles in promoting the social responsibility of the scientist.

10. Raja Ramanna (1925 - 2004)

With an HPI of 45.23, Raja Ramanna is the 10th most famous Indian Physicist. His biography has been translated into 19 different languages.

Raja Ramanna (28 January 1925 – 24 September 2004) was an Indian nuclear physicist. He was the director of India's nuclear program in the late 1960s and early 1970s, which culminated in Smiling Buddha, India's first successful nuclear weapon test on 18 May 1974. Ramanna obtained his bachelors in Physics at Madras University and PhD from King's College, London. He joined the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and later the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) to work on nuclear physics. Ramanna worked under Homi Jehangir Bhabha, whom he had met earlier in 1944. He joined the nuclear program in 1964, and later became the director of this program in 1967. Ramanna expanded and supervised scientific research on nuclear weapons and was in charge of the team of scientists at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) that designed and carried out the testing of the first nuclear device in 1974. Ramanna was associated with India's nuclear program for more than four decades, and also facilitated research for the Indian Armed Forces. He served in various roles such as Secretary for Defence Research, Government of India (1978–81), Scientific Adviser to the Minister of Defence (1978–81), Director-general of Defence Research and Development Organisation (1978–82), Chairman of Atomic Energy Commission (1983–87) and Secretary of the Department of Atomic Energy (1983–87). He later became the Minister of state for defence in 1990. He served as a Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha from 1997 to 2003. Towards the later part of his career, he advocated against nuclear proliferation and testing. Ramanna was associated with various academic institutions. He was the founder-director of National Institute of Advanced Studies and served as the chairman of board of governors at IIT Bombay. He has been awarded multiple honorary doctorates by various universities. He was awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India's second highest civilian decoration, in 1975. Ramanna died in Mumbai in 2004 at the age of 79.

People

Pantheon has 16 people classified as Indian physicists born between 1888 and 1956. Of these 16, 3 (18.75%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living Indian physicists include Jayant Narlikar, Abhay Ashtekar, and Ashoke Sen. The most famous deceased Indian physicists include C. V. Raman, Satyendra Nath Bose, and Anna Mani. As of April 2024, 2 new Indian physicists have been added to Pantheon including Daulat Singh Kothari, and G. N. Ramachandran.