India has been the cradle of many scientific discoveries. Here we profile an Indian Scientist and one ancient Indian Technology…
Acharya Kanad was the Indian sage who developed Atomic theory 2,600 years ago. One of the most notable scientists of ancient India, Kanad is said to have devised the atomic theory centuries before John Dalton was born. He speculated the existence of anu or a small indestructible particle, much like an atom.
Kanad was born as Kashyap in 600 B.C. at Dwarka in Gujarat. He was the son of a philosopher named Ulka. From his childhood, Kashyap had a keen sense of observation. Minute things attracted his attention. Once he went on a pilgrimage, he saw thousands of pilgrims littered the town roads and the banks of river Ganga with flowers and rice grains which they offered at the temple. He started collecting the grains of rice and made the people around him realize the importance of each grain or kan of rice. Since then people started calling him Kanad, as “Kan” in Sanskrit means “Smallest particle“.
Kanad was the first person in the world to discuss atoms and molecules. He was the one who first propounded that the Parmanu (Atoms) was an indestructible particle of matter. The theory occurred to Kanad while he was walking with food in his hand and he was breaking it into small pieces. He nibbled at the food in his hand until he was no longer able to break it down into smaller pieces. It was then that he realized that he could not divide the food into further parts and conceptualized the idea of a particle that could not be divided any further. He called that indivisible particle “Parmanu,” or “Anu,” which literally means atom. Though his theory of the atom was abstract and leaned towards philosophy and logic than experimentation, it is still considered even in modern times as a brilliant and imaginative explanation of the physical structure of the world and for largely agreeing with the discoveries of modern physics.
-Team ScienceNow
