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Icons of Bhārat
The freedom fighters, scientists, poets, saints, kings, artists, and champions who shaped Bhārat — from the heroes of the epics to the father of the nation. Meet the people who made the story of Bhārat.
31 icons in Scientists & Thinkers
Scientists & Thinkers
31 icons
A.N. Krishnarao
ए.एन. कृष्णराव
A.N. Krishnarao was one of the most influential literary critics of modern Kannada — a scholar and public intellectual who championed the new writing of his age, interpreted the classics for a new generation, and shaped the modern Kannada critical tradition with his essays and lectures.
A.P.J. Abdul Kalam
ए.पी.जे. अब्दुल कलाम
From selling newspapers as a boy in Rameswaram to becoming the President of Bhārat, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam lived the dream of Bhārat. The scientist behind Bhārat's missiles and nuclear tests, he was loved more as a teacher — 'Dream Kalam' to the millions of students he inspired.
A.R. Krishna Shastri
ए.आर. कृष्ण शास्त्री
A.R. Krishna Shastri was one of the greatest literary scholars of Kannada — the critic and editor who discovered, edited, and interpreted the ancient classics of the language, bringing the forgotten masterpieces of Kannada literature to the modern reader. His scholarship helped awaken the Kannada renaissance of the twentieth century.
Ananda Coomaraswamy
आनंद कुमारस्वामी
Ananda Coomaraswamy was the scholar who introduced the art of Bhārat to the world — the pioneer of art history who rescued the sculpture, painting, and crafts of Bhārat from Western condescension and revealed their philosophical depth. His books are the foundation of the modern study of art of Bhārat.
Aryabhata
आर्यभट
Aryabhata was the first great astronomer and mathematician of Bhārat — the scientist who, in the fifth century, declared that the earth rotates on its axis, explained the causes of eclipses correctly, and computed the value of pi with remarkable accuracy. Bhārat's first satellite, launched in 1975, was named in his honour.
Ashutosh Mukherjee
आशुतोष मुखर्जी
Ashutosh Mukherjee, the Tiger of Bengal, was one of the greatest educationists of modern Bhārat — a brilliant mathematician and jurist who, as the Vice-Chancellor of Calcutta University, transformed it into a world-class institution and fought the British to make higher education accessible to the people of Bhārat. He was also a great judge of the Calcutta High Court.
Birbal Sahni
बीरबल साहनी
Birbal Sahni was the father of palaeobotany of Bhārat — the scientist who studied the fossil plants of Bhārat and established the discipline in the country. The Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany at Lucknow, which he founded, is the world's leading centre of the field, and his work revealed the deep history of Bhārat's vegetation and geology.
C.V. Raman
सी.वी. रमन
C.V. Raman was the first Asian and first person of Bhārat to win a Nobel Prize in science — for discovering why light changes colour when it passes through matter, the famous Raman Effect. He was curious about the blue sea; he ended up explaining the behaviour of light itself.
G.D. Naidu
जी.डी. नायडू
G.D. Naidu — the Edison of Bhārat — was the self-made inventor and industrialist of Coimbatore who built Bhārat's first indigenous motorcar, electric motors, and a dozen industries from textile machinery to pocket radios. A school dropout who became the Tatas' technical adviser, he proved that hands could make of Bhārat anything.
H. Narasimhaiah
ಹೆಚ್. ನರಸಿಂಹಯ್ಯ
H. Narasimhaiah was a physicist, educationist, and the most famous rationalist of Karnataka — a man who devoted his life to science, education, and the fight against superstition. He led the Bangalore Science Forum, the movement that took science to the people, and his fearless campaigns against fraud and superstition made him a beloved and controversial figure of the state.
Har Gobind Khorana
हरगोबिन्द खुराना
Har Gobind Khorana was one of the greatest scientists of the modern age — the biochemist who helped crack the genetic code, discovering how the four letters of DNA spell out the instructions of life. For that discovery he won the Nobel Prize in 1968, becoming one of the most honoured scientists of Indian origin in the world.
Homi Bhabha
होमी भाभा
Homi Bhabha was the physicist who built Bhārat's nuclear science — the man who persuaded Nehru to fund atomic research and who founded the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and the Atomic Energy Establishment that made Bhārat a nuclear power. His vision of science as the basis of national strength shaped modern Bhārat.
J.C. Bose
जे.सी. बोस
Jagadish Chandra Bose was the Bengali polymath who proved that plants have life and feeling — inventing the crescograph, a device so sensitive it recorded a plant's pulse. He was also a pioneer of radio waves and of science fiction, and the founder of the Bose Institute, the first great research institute of modern Bhārat.
J.R.D. Tata
जे.आर.डी. टाटा
J.R.D. Tata was one of the greatest industrialists of the modern world — the chairman of the Tata group for more than fifty years, who built it into a global empire and founded Air India, the nation's first airline. He was also a pioneer aviator — the first licensed pilot of Bhārat — and his philanthropy made the Tatas the model of business in service of the nation.
Jamsetji Tata
जमशेदजी टाटा
Jamsetji Tata was the founder of industry of Bhārat — the merchant who built the textile mills of Bombay and then dreamed of three great institutions: an iron and steel plant, a hydroelectric dam, and a world-class university of science. Every one of them — Tata Steel, Tata Power, and the Indian Institute of Science — was built after his death, by his sons, on his vision.
K.S. Krishnan
கே.எஸ். கிருஷ்ணன்
K.S. Krishnan was one of the great physicists of modern Bhārat — the collaborator of C.V. Raman in the discovery of the Raman Effect, and later the founder of solid-state physics research in the country. A physicist of extraordinary precision, he also served as the director of the National Physical Laboratory and as the first director of the All India Institute of Sciences' physics work.
Laxmanrao Kirloskar
लक्ष्मणराव किर्लोस्कर
Laxmanrao Kirloskar was the father of the small-scale industry of Bhārat — the pioneer who left a settled life to make machines in a village, building the great Kirloskar group from a single workshop. His belief that the villages of Bhārat could build their own machines helped shape the industrial future of the nation.
M. Hiriyanna
ಎಂ. ಹಿರಿಯಣ್ಣ
M. Hiriyanna was one of the greatest philosophers of modern Bhārat — a professor of Sanskrit and philosophy at the University of Mysore whose writings on Indian aesthetics and the philosophies of Bhārat are admired the world over. He was also the great teacher whose students called it a privilege to sit at his feet.
M. Visvesvaraya
एम. विश्वेश्वरैया
M. Visvesvaraya was the engineer-statesman who built the great Krishna Raja Sagara dam, planned the flood protection of Hyderabad, and as the Diwan of Mysore turned his state into a model of industrial progress. His birthday, 15 September, is celebrated as Engineer's Day across Bhārat.
Nagarjuna
नागार्जुन
Nagarjuna was one of the greatest philosophers of the world — the founder of the Madhyamaka school of Buddhism, whose teaching of emptiness (sunyata) transformed Buddhist thought and influenced philosophy across Asia. His Mulamadhyamakakarika is studied by philosophers and monks from India to Japan, and his name is honoured across the Buddhist world.
P.C. Ray
पी.सी. रे
Prafulla Chandra Ray was the father of chemistry of Bhārat — the scientist who founded the first chemical industry of Bhārat, wrote the celebrated 'History of Hindu Chemistry', and built a generation of chemists from his laboratory of Bhārat at Presidency College, Calcutta. His life spanned a country that went from colonial neglect to national science.
S. Radhakrishnan
सर्वपल्ली राधाकृष्णन
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan was one of the greatest philosophers and statesmen of the modern world — the scholar who carried the wisdom of Bhārat to the universities of the West and later became the second President of the republic. His birthday, 5 September, is celebrated across Bhārat as Teachers' Day, in honour of the philosopher who was the world's most beloved teacher.
S.R. Ranganathan
एस.आर. रंगनाथन
S.R. Ranganathan was the father of library science in Bhārat — a mathematician turned librarian whose Five Laws of Library Science transformed how the world thinks about libraries. His Colon Classification and his vision of libraries as engines of knowledge made him one of the most influential librarians in history.
Satyendra Nath Bose
सत्येंद्र नाथ बोस
Satyendra Nath Bose was the physicist whose 1924 paper on light quanta so impressed Albert Einstein that he extended it — creating the Bose-Einstein statistics, the foundation of quantum mechanics. The 'boson', the particle named for him, was confirmed by the Nobel-winning discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012. He is the person of Bhārat who gave physics its most famous particle.
Sayanacharya
सायणाचार्य
Sayanacharya was the great commentator on the Vedas — the scholar of the Vijayanagara empire whose commentary on the Rigveda and the other Vedas remains the standard key to the oldest scriptures of Bhārat. His work, done with his brother Vidyaranya, preserved the meaning of the Vedas for all time.
Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar
शांति स्वरूप भटनागर
Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar was the scientist who built the institutional framework of science of Bhārat — the founder of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), whose network of laboratories became the backbone of the nation's research. Bhārat's highest science award, the Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar Prize, bears his name.
Srinivasa Ramanujan
श्रीनिवास रामानुजन
With no formal training, a clerk from Madras wrote down formulas that left Cambridge's greatest mathematicians speechless. Srinivasa Ramanujan, the man who knew infinity, produced mathematics so far ahead of his time that it still shapes modern physics and computing.
Sushruta
सुश्रुत
Sushruta is the father of surgery — the ancient physician of Bhārat whose Sushruta Samhita is one of the world's oldest and greatest medical texts. He performed cataract surgery, described plastic surgery of the nose two thousand years before the West, and set down the ethics and the science of the operating theatre for all time.
Tirumale Tatacharya
तिरुमले ताताचार्य
Tirumale Tatacharya was a celebrated Sanskrit scholar of Karnataka — a vidwan whose learning in the Vedas, the shastras, and the traditional sciences made him one of the most respected scholars of his age, honoured by institutions and rulers for his mastery of the classical tradition.
Vikram Sarabhai
विक्रम साराभाई
Vikram Sarabhai was the father of the space programme of Bhārat — the physicist who founded ISRO and the Physical Research Laboratory, and who launched Bhārat's first satellite, Aryabhata. A visionary institution-builder, he also created the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and believed that space technology must serve the common man.
Walchand Hirachand
वालचंद हीराचंद
Walchand Hirachand was one of the greatest industrialists of the freedom era — the man who founded Bhārat's first shipyard, first aircraft factory, and first automobile company. His vision that the nation must build its own machines helped lay the industrial foundation of independent Bhārat, and his name remains honoured among the builders of the modern economy.
One land. Endless wonders.
Which story will you explore next? Every card below began on soil of Bhārat.