Thiruvanaikovil residents want street to be named after C.V. Raman

A group of residents of Ayyan Street in Thiruvanaikovil has requested State government to consider renaming the lane in honour of Nobel laureate and physicist Sir C.V. Raman as the house where he was born is located on the street.

The house, with door number 33/35, is a structure with asbestos roof and an iron gate, located close to Sri Jambukeswarar Akilandeswari temple.

“At present, the street uses a caste name. Since the Tamil Nadu government is in the process of removing such names and replacing them to promote equality, we suggest that our street be named after Sir C.V. Raman. Not many people are aware that the (rental) home of his maternal grandparents, where he was born on November 7, 1888, is situated here. Renaming the street will be our way to honour his contribution to the world of science in Thiruvanaikovil,” V. Jambunathan, a third-generation resident of the street, who works as a public relations inspector at the Postal Department, told The Hindu.

He and fellow residents M.S. Natarajan, Ram Umashankar, and R. Nagarajan presented their petition to Ward 5 Councillor S. Muthukumar on Thursday.

C.V. Raman was the second of eight children born to Chandrasekhar Ramanathan Iyer and Parvathi Ammal. He gained acclaim for his work in the field of light scattering that was later called the Raman Effect. The discovery earned him the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1930.