Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman (November 7, 1888 – November 21, 1970) was an Indian physicist whose work was influential in the growth of science in India. His spirit of inquiry and devotion to science laid the foundations for scientific research in India. He was the first Asian scientist to win a Nobel Prize for Physics in 1930 for the discovery that when light traverses a transparent material, some of the light that is deflected changes in wavelength. This phenomenon is now called Raman Scattering and is the result of the Raman Effect.