I have always thought it a great privilege to have as my colleague in the Palit Chair of Chemistry such a distinguished pioneer in scientific research and education in Bengal as Sir Prafulla Ray.
From Calcutta has gone forth a living stream of knowledge in many branches of study. It is inspiring to think of the long succession of scholars, both Indian and European, who have lived in this city, made it their own, and given it of their best.
Towards the end of February 1928, I took the decision of using brilliant monochromatic illumination obtained by the aid of the commercially available mercury arcs sealed in quartz tubes.
We need a spirit of victory, a spirit that will carry us to our rightful place under the sun, a spirit which can recognize that we, as inheritors of a proud civilization, are entitled to our rightful place on this planet. If that indomitable spirit were to arise, nothing can hold us from achieving our rightful destiny.
We begin to realise that the molecular scattering of light in liquids may possess an astronomical significance, in fact contribute in an important degree to the observed albedo of the earth.
The fundamental importance of the subject of molecular diffraction came first to be recognized through the theoretical work of the late Lord Rayleigh on the blue light of the sky, which he showed to be the result of the scattering of sunlight by the gases of the atmosphere.
