The Hindu : Guntur's bit for science

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Sep 25, 2003

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Guntur's bit for science

By A. Saye Sekhar

GUNTUR SEPT. 24. Guntur's chief claim to fame is that it is the heartland of Virginia tobacco cultivation in India, but few people know that it was in this city in Andhra Pradesh that helium was discovered.

Guntur is situated at a crucial longitude for synoptic coverage of solar phenomena. It was on August 18, 1868 in the tobacco fields of Guntur that the French astronomer, Pierre-Jules-Cisar Janssen (1824-1907), stumbled upon a yellow line in the solar spectrum while observing a solar eclipse. He christened it `Heliose', from the Greek word helios, which means sun.

A British team led by Col. Tennant and a French one led by Jannsen observed the total solar eclipse from Guntur in 1868. When the solar corona flashed into view after the moon blocked the photosphere of the sun, the light was spectroscopically analysed by passing it through a prism. The spectral lines produced a new yellow line in the solar spectrum very close to the yellow sodium D-line. This was not known earlier and did not tally with any known elements.

The British scientist, Sir Norman Lockyer, suggested that this extra line could be the signature of a new and unknown element in the sun and he called it `helium'.

In 1895, the British scientist, Sir William Ramsey, chanced upon helium while looking for the inert gas, argon. He discovered helium after treating cleveite, an ore of uranium, with mineral acids. He sent samples to Sir William Crookes and Sir Lockyer, who identified helium.

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