Blink and You Miss It

Abstract

The “inelastic scattering of light”, or Raman effect, was observed in practice for the first time in 1928 by C. V. Raman for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1930. It is only in the last two decades, however, that Raman spectroscopy has begun to realize its potential as an almost universally applicable analytical technique from materials and life sciences applications to point of care analysis. This is primarily thanks to the availability of compact laser sources, high sensitivity cameras and high resolution compact spectrometers.