Meghnad Saha

Born on 6 October 1893, Meghnad Saha was an Indian astrophysicist known for his theory of thermal ionization. Because his family was poor and belonged to the lowest tier of the Indian caste system, Saha had to earn merit scholarships to attend school and faced discrimination, particularly while a student at Presidency College at the University of Calcutta. While at college, Saha became involved with India’s revolutionary movement , which sought independence from Britain. Pursuing his physics studies was made even more difficult by the advent of World War I, which impeded the flow of scientific literature from Europe. Nevertheless, Saha completed his doctorate in physics in 1919. In the early 1920s Saha traveled to Europe, where he visited several scientific laboratories, including Alfred Fowler’s at Imperial College London and Walther Nernst’s in Berlin. After returning to India, Saha became a professor of physics at the University of Allahabad in 1923, was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1927, and joined the University of Calcutta in 1938, where he worked to create the institute of nuclear physics that is now named in his honor. Saha’s physics legacy was sealed with his development in the early 1920s of the Saha ionization equation, which relates the spectra of stars to their temperature and other physical and chemical conditions. The equation, which has become one of the most important tools in astrophysics, earned Saha multiple Nobel Prize nominations . In 1952 he was elected to India’s parliament. He died in 1956 at age 62.

Date in History: 6 October 1893