This volume contains 55 publications in the field of Acoustics and includes the famous landmark paper On the Mechanical Theory of Vibration of Bowed Strings--perhaps the most important contribution to the theory of violins since Helmholtz, and also the English translation of Raman's celebrated monograph, Musik instrumente und ihre Klange (Musical Instruments and Their Tones) in the Springer Encyclopaedia of Physics. The volume includes six remarkable papers on the acoustics of Indian musical instruments--the mridangam and tabla, the only percussion instruments in the world that produce harmonic vibrations, and the tanpura and veena.

This volume presents 65 of C.V. Raman's publications in the field of optics. His celebrated Baroda Lectures (1941) reprinted here is a masterly elucidation of many optical phenomena reflecting forty years of living with light. Here may be found expositions on the geometric theory of Fresnel diffraction, diffraction by a sphere and a circular disc, the study of haloes and coronae, and his discovery of the speckle phenomenon (1919) from observations of the radiant spectrum seen by the eye. Raman's surprising observations on conical refraction, the wave-like character of periodic precipitates, the propagation of light in polycrystalline media, and the remarkable study of mirages, of new relevance today in the context of cosmic mirages formed by gravitational lenses, are to be found in this collection.

The name of Raman is familiar to science not only through the effect that bears his name, but also due to derivative names such as stimulated Raman scattering and Raman laser. However, other than that he won the Nobel Prize, little is generally know about the man himself. But the story is fascinating. Raman fiercely cherished his independence and rejected government support for his research. A sharp critic of many government policies, he was often misunderstood and maligned, though his commitment to science and to its growth in India never wavered. Venkataraman's account deals with all these aspects of Raman's life and work, besides placing them in a proper perspective vis-a-vis the overall Indian scene. Numerous quotations help capture the mood and excitement of those times. The book is not only a lively biography of a colorful personality, but also required reading for anyone with a serious interest in and concern for Indian science.

This book addresses the acoustic signal analysis and spectral dynamics of the tanpura, an Indian plucked string instrument. In addition, it strives to provide a logical and objective explanation of Indian classical musicians’ cognitive experience. Issues of relevance in this regard include the rich, mellifluous sound; the undulation of the loudness; the somewhat cyclical variation of the timbre, which is strongly related to these undulations; and the occasional perception of virtual notes to which no strings are tuned. The book analyses the materials used in the tanpura, the instrument’s simple structure, the intricacies of the lower bridge, and the theory of string vibration with variable string length. Cognitive experiments to provide the basis for perceptual quality assessment, as well as a methodology for ranking, are described. This is followed by acoustic analyses, both temporal and spectral, for sounds produced by male and female tanpuras, for each individual string and the combined one. An important aspect related to the naturalness of perceived sound, namely the intrinsically associated random perturbations, is also discussed. The apparent irregularities perceived in the acoustic signal produced by the tanpura reveal the importance of examining the signal from the perspective of non-linear analysis, an aspect that is also covered in the book. Given its scope, the book will appeal to students and researchers in the fields of music acoustics, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science, as well as musicians and musicologists around the world.