The Habit That Preceded the Nobel
On a voyage from England to India in 1921, CV Raman looked at the Mediterranean Sea and refused to accept the standard answer for why it looked blue. The explanation at the time, that the sea reflected the colour of the sky, satisfied everyone else on the ship. Raman pulled out his instruments. Seven years later, that refusal to stop at the obvious answer produced the Raman Effect: the discovery that light changes wavelength when it scatters through matter. The Nobel Prize in Physics followed in 1930.
