Portal:West Bengal/Selected biography/2
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Meghnad N. Saha (October 6, 1893 – February 16, 1956) was a Bengali Indian astrophysicist. He was born in a village named Shaoratoli near Dhaka in current day Bangladesh, initially studied in Dhaka Collegiate School, and later in Dhaka College. He was a student of the Presidency College, Kolkata; a professor of Allahabad University from 1923 to 1938 and thereafter a professor and Dean of the Faculty of Science at the University of Calcutta until his death in 1956. He became Fellow of the Royal Society in 1927. In his book, The Scientific Edge, the noted physicist Jayant Narlikar says that “Meghnad Saha’s ionization equation (c. 1920), which opened the door to stellar astrophysics” was one of the top ten achievements of 20th century Indian science and “could be considered in the Nobel Prize class.”
