He was an Indian physicist. He was a co-discoverer of Raman scattering, for which his mentor C. V. Raman was awarded the 1930 Nobel Prize in Physics.
"What is remarkable about Krishnan is not that he is a great scientist but something much more. He is a perfect citizen, a whole man with an integrated personality."- Jawaharlal Nehru
Background
Kariamanickam Srinivasa Krishnan, Iyengar generally referred to as K. S. Krishnan or KSK, was born on December 4, 1898 in Watrap, Tamil Nadu.
His father was a farmer-scholar deeply versed in Tamil and Sanskrit literature.
Education
He had his early schooling in Srivilliputhur near to his native village.
He attended the American College, Madurai and the Christian College, Madras where after gaining his degree in Physics he became a Lecturer in Chemistry.
Career
In 1920, Krishnan went to work with C.V. Raman at the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science. There he engaged himself in experimental study of the scattering of light in a large number of liquids and its theoretical interpretations. He played a significant role in the discovery of the Raman Effect.
In 1928 he moved to the Dacca University as the Reader in the physics department where he studied magnetic properties of crystals in relation to their structure. Krishnan, along with other rising scientists such as Santilal (S.) Banerjee, B.C. Guha, and Asutosh Mookerjie developed an elegant and precise experimental technique to measure the magnetic anisotropy of dia - and paramagnetic crystals. Their findings were published by the Royal Society of London in 1933 under the title, Investigations on Magne-Crystallic Action.
In 1933 he returned to Kolkata to take up the post of Mahendralal Sircar Professor of Physics in the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science where he continued to collaborate fruitfully with Dr. Santilal Banerjee to elaborate on the magnetic properties of crystals in relation to their structure. Their joint papers and communications (published in Nature, Terrestrial Magnetism and Atmospheric Electricity, and by the Royal Society), remain to this day, aside from a number of other pathbreaking contributions they also published in various Physics journals, the most definitive scientific studies on the structure and tendencies of small crystals.
In 1942, he moved to Allahabad University as Professor and Head of the Department of Physics where he took up the physics of solids, in particular of metals.