Meghnad Saha

He married Radharani in 1918 and the couple was blessed with three sons and three daughters. One of his sons also became a professor at the Institute of Nuclear Physics.

He died of a heart attack on 16 February 1956.

Astrophysicist Jayant Narlikar paid his tribute to Saha years later stating that Saha’s ionization equation was a major achievement in 20th century Indian science, worthy of a Nobel Prize.

Meghnad Saha was born as the fifth child of Jagannath Saha and his wife Bhubaneswari Devi. His father ran a small shop and the family was poor. His parents, due to their financial position, weren’t interested in educating their children much.

Meghnad displayed a very keen interest in studies from a very early age. After the completion of his primary education his parents wanted him to drop studies and help in the family’s shop.

However the boy found a good Samaritan in Ananta Kumar, a local doctor who agreed to sponsor the boy’s education in return of some simple chores. After passing out of middle school he went to Dhaka in 1905 where he joined the Collegiate School.

He passed the intermediate examination in 1911 and joined the Presidency College at Calcutta. There he met Satyendranath Bose as a classmate; Bose went on to become a very prominent physicist.

At the college he was taught by Prafulla Chandra Ray and Jagadish Chandra Bose. He earned his BSc in mathematics in 1913 and MSc in Applied Mathematics in 1915.

He got appointed as a lecturer in the Department of Applied Mathematics in 1916 in the University College of Science, Calcutta. His former classmate Satyendranath Bose also joined the same university.

Both Saha and Bose got themselves transferred to the physics department where Saha started lecturing on topics like hydrostatics, spectroscopy and thermodynamics.

Along with his teaching responsibilities, Saha also started doing research. He immersed himself into research even though the college didn’t even had an experimental research laboratory.

In 1917, he wrote a long essay on ‘Selective Radiation Pressure’ which he sent to the Astrophysical Journal for publication. However, he was told that it could be published only if he bore a portion of the costs for publication. Being short of funds, he could not afford it. However, a short note on his research was published in the journal.

He was awarded his Doctor of Science from the Calcutta University in 1919. He also received the Premchand Roychand Scholarship for his dissertation on the ‘Harvard Classification of Stellar Spectra’ the same year.

Saha’s biggest contribution to the field of astrophysics is the Saha ionization equation which related the ionization state of an element to the temperature and pressure. This equation is used to explain the spectral classification of stars.