SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN INDIA - 5 - ANSWERS

1. C. Subhash Mukhopadhyay

(Pankaj Kapoor in "Ek Doctor Ki Maut")

"Ek Doctor Ki Maut" is a 1990 award-winning Hindi film starring Pankaj Kapur, Shabana Azmi, Anil Chatterjee and Irfan Khan in lead roles by noted Bengali director Tapan Sinha, which depicts the ostracism, bureaucratic negligence, reprimand and insult of a doctor and his research, instead of recognition. The film is based on the story "Abhimanyu" by Ramapada Chowdhury and is loosely based on the life of Dr. Subhash Mukhopadhyay, an Indian Physician who pioneered the In vitro fertilisation treatment just around the same time when another leading scientist Dr. Robert Edwards was conducting separate experiments in England.

Subhash Mukhopadhyay (16 January 1931 – 19 June 1981) was an Indian Bengali scientist, physician from Hazaribagh, Jharkhand, who created the world's second and India's first child (Durga) using in-vitro fertilization. Kanupriya Agarwal (Durga), who was born in 1978, just 67 days after the first IVF baby in United Kingdom. Afterwards, Dr. Subhash Mukhopadhyay was harassed by the then West Bengal State government and Indian Government and not allowed to share his achievements with the international scientific community. Dejected, he committed suicide on 19 June 1981.

2. C. Wipro

Wipro (formerly, Western India Palm Refined Oil Limited) is an Indian multinational corporation that provides information technology, consulting and business process services. It is headquartered in Bangalore, Karnataka, India.

(Azim Hashim Premji, Chairman of Wipro Limited)

The company was incorporated on 29 December 1945 in Amalner, Maharashtra by Mohamed Premji as "Western India Palm Refined Oil Limited", later abbreviated to "Wipro". It was initially set up as a manufacturer of vegetable and refined oils in Amalner, Maharashtra. In 1966, after Mohamed Premji's death, his son Azim Premji took over Wipro as its chairman at the age of 21. During the 1970s and 1980s, the company shifted its focus to new opportunities in the IT and computing industry, which was at a nascent stage in India at the time. On 7 June 1977, the name of the company changed from Western India Vegetable Products Limited to Wipro Products Limited. In 1982, the name was changed again, from Wipro Products Limited to Wipro Limited.

In 2013, Wipro separated its non-IT businesses and formed the privately owned Wipro Enterprises.

3. B. Chidambaram Subramaniam

Chidambaram Subramaniam (30 January 1910 – 7 November 2000), was an Indian politician and Independence activist who served as Minister of Finance and Minister of Defence in the union cabinet. He later served as the Governor of Maharashtra. As the Minister for Food and Agriculture, he ushered the Indian Green Revolution, an era of self-sufficiency in food production along with M. S. Swaminathan, B. Sivaraman and Norman E. Borlaug. He was awarded Bharat Ratna, Indian's highest civilian award, in 1998, for his role in ushering Green Revolution.

(American agronomist, ‘Father of the Green Revolution’ and Nobel laureate, Dr Norman Borlaug (left) advising a farmer on wheat development programmes during his visit to Bombay in 1971. Borlaug regularly visited India during the rabi season, checking on wheat development programmes.)

Along with M. S. Swaminathan and B. Sivaraman, Subramaniam was the architect of India's modern agricultural development policy, after the success of his programme which led to a record production of wheat in 1972 termed as the Indian Green Revolution. As Minister for Food and Agriculture, he introduced high-yielding varieties of seeds and more intensive application of fertilizers which paved the way for increased output of cereals and attainment of self-sufficiency in food-grains in the country.

4. B. Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur

The Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur is a public technical and research university established by the Government of India in 1951. It is the first of the IITs to be established and is recognized as an "Institute of National Importance". In 2019, it was awarded the status of "Institute of Eminence".

(Main Building of IIT, Kharagpur)

The institute was initially established to train scientists and engineers after India attained independence in 1947 as result of recommendation by a Committee led by Sir Jogendra Singh. On the grounds that West Bengal had the highest concentration of industries at the time, Bidhan Chandra Roy, the Chief Minister of West Bengal, persuaded Jawaharlal Nehru (India's first prime minister) to establish the institute in West Bengal. The first Indian Institute of Technology was thus established in May 1950 as the "Eastern Higher Technical Institute". It was located in Esplanade East, Calcutta, and in September 1950 shifted to its permanent campus at Hijli, Kharagpur 120 kilometres south-west of Kolkata. Hijli had been used as a detention camp during the British colonial rule in India, to keep Indian freedom fighters captive.

The name "Indian Institute of Technology" was adopted before the formal inauguration of the institute on 18 August 1951 by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad.

5. B. Super Computers

Vijay Pandurang Bhatkar is an Indian computer scientist, IT leader and educationalist. He is best known as the architect of India's national initiative in supercomputing where he led the development of Param supercomputers in early 1990s. PARAM is a series of supercomputers designed and assembled by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) in Pune, India.

Bhatkar is a Padma Bhushan, Padma Shri and Maharashtra Bhushan awardee. Bhatkar has been chancellor of Nalanda University, India since January 2017 for a period of 3 years.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN INDIA - 5

Q1. The 1990 award-winning Hindi film " Ek Doctor Ki Maut" is loosely based on the life of which Indian physician?

A. Abraham Verghese

B. C. N. Manjunath

C. Subhash Mukhopadhyay

Q2. Which one of these IT companies of India was initially a manufacturer of vegetable oils?

A. Infosys

B. HCL Technologies

C. Wipro

Q3. Who among the following was awarded "Bharat Ratna" for his role as Food and Agriculture Minister of India to usher the Indian Green Revolution, making India self-sufficient in food in collaboration with M.S. Swaminathan and Norman E. Borlaug? 

A. Govind Ballabh Pant

B. Chidambaram Subramaniam

C. K. Kamaraj

Q4. Which one of these Technical Institutions of India is located in a campus which was once a detention camp in British India?

A. Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee

B. Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur

C. Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad

Q5. Vijay P. Bhatkar has been closely  associated with the development of _____ in India.

A. Fiber Optics

B. Super Computers

C. Cloud Computing

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN INDIA - 4 - ANSWERS

1. A. Kapustin Yar

“Aryabhata”, India's first indigenously built satellite was launched on 19 April 1975 from Kapustin Yar, a Russian rocket launch and development site in Astrakhan Oblast using a Kosmos-3M launch vehicle. It was built by the Indian Space Research Organisation under the leadership of U.R. Rao. The launch came from an agreement between India and the Soviet Union directed by UR Rao and signed in 1972.

The satellite was named after the 5th century astronomer and mathematician “Aryabhata”. The satellite's image appeared on the reverse of Indian two rupee banknotes between 1976 and 1997.

2. C. Prafulla Chandra Ray

Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray (2 August 1861 – 16 June 1944) was a Bengali chemist, educationist, historian, industrialist and philanthropist. A leading Bengali nationalist, he established the first Indian research school in chemistry and is regarded as the “father of chemical science in India”. Showing great promise in his studies as a young man in Bengal, he was awarded a fellowship to the University of Edinburgh in 1882, where he received his BS and then his PhD in 1887. In a day when organic chemistry was all the rage, he chose to pursue inorganic chemistry, becoming an expert in mineral salts, such as sulfates and nitrites.

The Royal Society of Chemistry honoured his life and work with the first ever “Chemical Landmark Plaque” outside Europe. He was the founder of “Bengal Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals”, India's first pharmaceutical company. He is the author of “A History of Hindu Chemistry from the Earliest Times to the Middle of Sixteenth Century” (1902).

(First page of Chandra Ray’s paper on nitrites of mercury, in which he announced his discovery of “mercurous nitrite” in “Journal of the Chemical Society of London”, 1897)

In 1897, he announced a major discovery of a new compound, “mercurous nitrite” through an article, which was published in several papers and Journals drawing attention worldwide.

3. A. 1729

“Hardy-Ramanujan Number” – (1729) is the smallest nontrivial "taxicab number", i.e., the smallest number representable in two ways as a sum of two cubes. It is given by:

                                           1729=1^3+12^3=9^3+10^3

So far, six taxicab numbers are known. They are:

The Hardy-Ramanujan number is named such after an anecdote of the British mathematician G.H. Hardy who had gone to visit Srinivasa Ramanujan (22 December 1887 – 26 April 1920), Indian mathematician in hospital. The anecdote is a part of Ramanujan's biography 'The Man Who Knew Infinity' by Robert Kanigel. Mr. Hardy quipped that he came in a taxi with the number '1729' which seemed a fairly ordinary number. Ramanujan said that it was not. 1729, the Hardy-Ramanujan Number, is the smallest number which can be expressed as the sum of two different cubes in two different ways.

Srinivasa Ramanujan, who lived only 32 years, had almost no formal training in pure mathematics, he made substantial contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions, including solutions to mathematical problems then considered unsolvable.

4. A. Satyendra Nath Bose

Satyendra Nath Bose, (1 January 1894 – 4 February 1974) was an Indian physicist specialising in theoretical physics. He is best known for his work on quantum mechanics in the early 1920s, providing 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–Einstein statistics, "bosons" (also known as "God Particle"), 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 sovereign India.

5. A. C. V. Raman

Sir Chandrashekhara Venkata Raman (7 November 1888 – 21 November 1970) was an Indian physicist who made ground-breaking works in the field of light scattering. With his student K. S. Krishnan at the "Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science", he discovered that when light traverses a transparent material, some of the deflected light changes wavelength and amplitude. This phenomenon, subsequently known as Raman scattering, results from the Raman effect. His works earned him the 1930 Nobel Prize for Physics and was the first Indian or Asian or non-white person to receive Nobel Prize in any branch of science.

In 1954, the Government of India honoured him with Bharat Ratna, its highest civilian award. February 28 is recognised as the National Science Day in India to commemorate day of the discovery of Raman effect in 1928.

(C.V. Raman at the Nobel Prize ceremony in 1930)

The Indian Academy of Sciences was founded by C. V. Raman at Bangalore in 1934.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN INDIA - 4

Q1. In April, 1975, from where was India's first satellite "Aryabhatta" launched?

A. Kapustin Yar

B. Cape Canaveral

C. Thumba

Q2. Name this Indian Chemist who founded "Bengal Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals", India's first pharmaceutical company and also discovered the chemical compound "Mercurous Nitrite".

A. Jagdish Chandra Bose

B. Upendranath Brahmachari

C. Prafulla Chandra Ray

Q3. Which among following natural number is known as "Hardy - Ramanujan number" or simply "Ramanujan's number" after Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan?

A. 1729

B. 17843

C. 309

Q4. In 1954, who became the first scientist to be conferred with "Padma Vibhushan", the second highest Civilian Award of India?

A. Satyendra Nath Bose

B. Homi J. Bhabha

C. Har Gobind Khorana

Q5. Who among the following established the "Indian Academy of Sciences" in 1934?

A. C. V. Raman

B. Vikram Sarabhai

C. Meghnad Saha

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN INDIA - 3 - ANSWERS

1. A. Apsara

(The top view of the reactor "APSARA")

India's and Asia's first nuclear reactor, "Apsara" (a highly versatile swimming pool-type of research reactor) first went critical on 4 August 1956. Later, on January 20, 1957, the reactor was dedicated to the nation and was named "APSARA" by then PM of India Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru.

(A caricature by R.K. Laxman following the inauguration of "APSARA" by Pt. Nehru in 1957)

Located within India's nuclear weapons facility at the Bhabha Atomic Research Center (BARC) in Mumbai, the Apsara reactor has been utilised for various experiments including neutron activation analysis, radiation damage studies, forensic research, neutron radiography, and shielding experiments. The research reactor facility provides much needed isotopes for medical purposes and also helps refine the design of India's nuclear weapons.

The reactor was shut down in 2009 for revamp and was turned on again in 2018.

2. B. Kalpana Chawla

METSAT - 1 (renamed as "Kalpana - 1" on February 5, 2003 after the Indian born American Astronaut Dr. Kalpana Chawla, who died on February 1, 2003 in the US Space Shuttle Columbia disaster) is the first in the series of exclusive meteorological satellites built by ISRO. It was launched by ISRO using Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C4) into the Geostationary orbit on 12 September 2002.

('Kalpana-1' satellite)

Kalpana-1 went out of service in mid-2018.

3. B. Jyoti Basu

India’s baby steps to its mobile revolution were taken on July 31, 1995, when then West Bengal CM Jyoti Basu made the first mobile call to Sukh Ram, the then-Union Communication Minister through India’s first mobile operator, Modi Telstra (later called Spice Telecom).

The call was made between Writer's Building in Calcutta and Sanchar Bhavan in New Delhi and was carried over Modi Telstra's MobileNet service. 

4. A. Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar

The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) was established in September 1942 as an autonomous body and has emerged as the largest research and development organization in India. CSIR has a dynamic network of 38 national laboratories, 39 outreach centres, 3 Innovation Complexes and 5 units at present. The research and development activities of CSIR include aerospace engineering, structural engineering, ocean sciences, life sciences, metallurgy, chemicals, mining, food, petroleum, leather and environmental science. In terms of Intellectual property, CSIR has 2971 patents in force internationally and 1592 patents in force in India. CSIR is granted more than 14000 patents worldwide since its inception.

Sir Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar (21 February 1894 – 1 January 1955), an Indian colloid chemist, academic and scientific administrator was the first Director-General of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). He is revered as the "Father of Research Laboratories" in India. He was also the first Chairman of the University Grants Commission of India (UGC). In 1958, to honour his name and legacy, CSIR instituted the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology for scientists who have made significant contributions in various branches of science.

5. A. Ashutosh Mukherjee

Indian Science Congress Association (ISCA) is a premier scientific organisation of India having membership of more than 30,000 scientists with its headquarters at Kolkata, West Bengal. The association started in 1914 in Kolkata and it meets annually in the first week of January. The Indian Science Congress Association (ISCA) owes its origin to the foresight and initiative of two British chemists - Professor J. L. Simonsen and Professor P. S. MacMahon.

(Logo of Indian Science Congress Association)

The first session of Indian Science Congress was held in 1914 at the premises of Asiatic Society in Calcutta. Honorable justice Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee, the then Vice Chancellor of the University of Calcutta presided over the Congress. The centenary edition of Indian Science Congress was also held at Kolkata hosted by the University of Calcutta in 2013.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN INDIA - 3

Q1. Which indigenously designed and built reactor was the first operational nuclear reactor in Asia?

A. Apsara

B. CIRUS

C. NAPS

Q2. The first dedicated Meteorological Satellite (METSAT) launched by "Indian Space Research Organization" (ISRO) was named after ____________ .

A. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

B. Kalpana Chawla

C. Satish Dhawan

Q3. In August 1995, who made the first mobile phone call in India to then Union Telecom Minister Sukh Ram?

A. Bal Thackeray

B. Jyoti Basu

C. T. N. Seshan

Q4. Who is the first Director-General of the "Council of Scientific and Industrial Research" (CSIR) and is revered as the "Father of Research Laboratories in India"?

A. Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar

B. Vikram Sarabhai

C. Meghnad Saha

Q5. Who presided over the first ever Session of the "Indian Science Congress" in 1914 held at the premises of the Asiatic Society, Calcutta?

A. Ashutosh Mukherjee

B. C.V. Raman

C. Satyendra Nath Bose

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN INDIA - 2 - ANSWERS

1. A. Antrix

Antrix Corporation Limited (ACL), Bengaluru is a Public Sector Undertaking (PSU) wholly owned by the Government of India under the administrative control of the Department of Space. It was incorporated in September 1992 to commercially exploit ISRO's space products, services and technologies. It was awarded 'Miniratna' status by the government in 2008.

As the commercial and marketing arm of ISRO, Antrix is engaged in providing Space products and  services to international customers worldwide. With fully equipped state-of-the-art facilities, Antrix provides end-to-end solution for many of the space products, ranging from supply of hardware and software including simple subsystems to a complex spacecraft, for varied applications covering communications, earth observation and scientific missions; space related services including remote sensing data service, Transponder lease service; Launch services through the operational launch vehicles (PSLV and GSLV); Mission support services; and a host of consultancy and training services.

2. C. Raja Ramanna

Raja Ramanna (born January 28, 1925, Tumkur, Mysore — died September 24, 2004, Mumbai), was an Indian nuclear physicist who played a key role in the development of that country’s nuclear weapons program.

In 1949,  after completing a doctoral degree in physics at King’s College, London, Ramanna joined the Indian nuclear science program at the Atomic Energy Establishment in Trombay where he worked under physicist Homi Jehangir Bhabha, for whom the establishment was later renamed "Bhabha Atomic Research Centre" (BARC). Ramanna served as director of BARC (1972–78 and 1981–83) and oversaw the country’s first nuclear weapons test (1974) code-named as "Smiling Buddha". He also headed India’s Atomic Energy Commission (1984–87) and served as the Secretary for Defense Research (1978–81) and as the Minister of State for Defense (1990) in V.P.Singh's  Govt.

3. B. Wheeler Island

"Abdul Kalam Island", formerly known as Wheeler Island, is an island off the coast of Odisha. The island was originally named after English commandant Lieutenant Hugh Wheeler. On 4 September 2015, the island was renamed to honour the late Indian president, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam.

The Odisha government allotted Abdul Kalam Island to the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) in 1993, following A.P.J. Abdul Kalam's request for land to build a missile testing facility - "The Integrated Test Range" - a missile testing facility composed of two complexes - Launch Complex-IV (LC-IV) located on Abdul Kalam Island (Wheeler Island) and Launch Complex-III (LC-III) located at Chandipur, Balasore, Odisha. Abdul Kalam Island is the missile test facility for most missiles of India:- Akash Missiles, Agni Missiles, Astra Missile, BrahMos, Nirbhay, Prahaar Missile, Prithvi Missiles, Shaurya Missile, Advanced Air Defence (AAD), Prithvi Air Defence etc.

Abdul Kalam Island is located close to the "Gahirmatha Marine Sanctuary", the world's largest breeding ground of the endangered Olive Ridley sea turtle.

4. A. Crescograph

Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose (Born 30 November 1858 – Mymensingh, Bengal, India (now in Bangladesh) — died November 23, 1937, Giridih, Bihar) was a polymath, physicist, biologist, biophysicist, botanist and archaeologist, and an early writer of science fiction in British India. He pioneered the investigation of radio and microwave optics, made significant contributions to plant science and laid the foundations of experimental science in the Indian subcontinent. “Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers” (IEEE), New Jersey, USA named him one of the “Fathers of Radio Science”.

After graduating from St. Xavier's College, Calcutta, Bose went to the University of London, England to study medicine, but could not pursue studies in medicine because of health problems. Instead, he conducted his research with the Nobel Laureate Lord Rayleigh at Cambridge and returned to India. He joined the Presidency College of the University of Calcutta as a Professor of Physics. There, despite racial discrimination and a lack of funding and equipment, Bose carried on his scientific research. He made remarkable progress in his research of remote wireless signaling and was the first to use semiconductor junctions to detect radio signals. However, instead of trying to gain commercial benefit from this invention, Bose made his inventions public in order to allow others to further develop his research.

Bose subsequently made a number of pioneering discoveries in plant physiology. He used his own invention, the “crescograph”, to measure plant response to various stimuli, and thereby scientifically proved parallelism between animal and plant tissues. His books on plants include “Response in the Living and Non-Living” (1902) and “The Nervous Mechanism of Plants” (1926).

In 1896, Bose wrote “Niruddesher Kahini” (The Story of the Missing One), a short story that was later expanded and added to Abyakta collection in 1921 with the new title “Palatak Tuphan” (Runaway Cyclone). It was one of the first works of Bengali science fiction.

In 2004, Bose was ranked number 7 in BBC's poll of the Greatest Bengali of all time. A crater on the moon has been named in his honour.

5. C. VSNL

The first publicly available internet service in India was launched by state-owned "Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited" (VSNL) on 15 August 1995. The initial launch of Internet in 1995 was with dial-up access with speeds of upto 9.6 kbps. By 1996, major newspapers such as the Times of India, the Hindu, the Indian Express and the Hindustan Times had set up websites; Rediff.com was launched; India’s first cyber cafe was launched in Mumbai.

VSNL was completely acquired by the Tata Group and renamed as "Tata Communications" in February, 2008.