Meghnad Saha
Meghnad Saha ( bengali : মেঘনাদ সাহা , Meghnād Sāhā ; born October 6, 1893 in Sheoratali , today Bangladesh ; † February 16, 1956 in Delhi ) was an Indian physicist .
life and work
He started his studies at the University of Calcutta . One of his teachers was Jagadish Chandra Bose . He soon specialized in astrophysics and plasma physics and made significant contributions to ionized matter in stars .
After the First World War he came to Europe and worked particularly in London , where he became a member of the Royal Society in 1927 . But he also spent some time in Berlin at the Nernst Institute.
The most important result of his research is the Saha equation named after him , which describes the thermodynamic equilibrium of a plasma. John Eggert published his preliminary work in German in the Physikalische Zeitschrift in 1919 . Saha read this work in India and was able to improve it significantly, resulting in a major breakthrough in understanding the physics of stars.
In the 1930s, Saha went back to India and taught at the University of Calcutta. In particular, he promoted the development of nuclear physics in India.
He later became politically active and became a member of the Indian parliament .
membership
In 1947, Saha was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .
literature
- Atri Mukhopadhyay: From atoms to stars: Meghnad Saha (1893–1956). In: Indian Journal of History of Science , Vol. 53, No. 4, December 2018, pp. T81-T87.
- Soma Banerjee: Meghnad Saha: Physicist and nationalist . Physics Today 69, 8, 38 (2016); https://doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.3267 . ( physicstoday.scitation.org )
- Arnab Rai Choudhuri: How the Saha Ionization Equation Was Discovered . ( arxiv.org )
- Jibamitra Ganguly: Meghnad Saha: his science and persona through letters and writings . Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi 2019.
- Collected works of Meghnad Saha. ed. by Santimay Chatterjee. Calcutta [u. a.]: Institute of Nuclear Physics [u. a.], 1982.
Individual evidence
- ^ Members of the American Academy. Listed by election year, 1900-1949 ( PDF ). Retrieved October 11, 2015
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Saha, Meghnad |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Indian physicist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 6, 1893 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Sheoratali , today Bangladesh |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 16, 1956 |
| Place of death | Delhi |