India@75: Freedom came at the dawn of a new age

Japan was on its knees, Germany had been divided, a post-war economic boom – one of the longest periods of growth in history – was just beginning. TOI pieces together a picture of the world circa 1947
PLUMBING THE ATOM
Three decades before India’s Independence, two revolutionary theories presaged the modern era. In 1913, physicists Niels Bohr (inset) and Ernest Rutherford said the atom is structured like the solar system with electrons orbiting a nucleus.And in 1915, Albert Einstein unveiled the general theory of relativity that linked mass, time and space in the iconic equation E= mc²
ART AGAINST WAR
In 1937, Pablo Picasso unveiled Guernica, a grey, black and white oil painting portraying horses in agony, wide-eyed bulls, frightened women and dead babies, in response to the bombing of northern Spain by Nazi Germany. It is still regarded as one of the most moving anti-war images in history.
NEW RULE OF DATING
In 1946, American physical chemist Willard Libby invented a way to assess the age of geological and archeological finds by measuring their content of carbon-14, a radioactive isotope of carbon. ‘Radiocarbon dating’ won Libby the chemistry Nobel in 1960.
INTO A GROOVE
The wild guitar solos of Arthur Crudup’s That’s Alright, Mama defined rock and roll in 1946 – a decade before Chuck Berry’s Maybellene and Elvis Presley’s Hound Dog. The raw and fuzzy sounds of Jackie Brenston and Ike Turner’s Rocket 88 followed in 1951. A blend of blues, country and pop had gripped the heart of a war-weary America.
THE PROMISED LAND
The influx of hundreds of thousands of Jewish Holocaust survivors into Britishcontrolled Palestine during and after WW2 led to clashes between Zionist and Arab militias. Unable to contain the Jewish insurgency, Britain evacuated Palestine, and in May 1948, David BenGurion declared the establishment of the Jewish state of Israel, which the UN recognised as a member country in 1949.
MACHINE AGE
Ford had introduced the first industrial assembly line after WW1. By the late 1940s a slew of consumer goods based on technology lined shop shelves. In the US, brooms were replaced by the Electrolux, and Schick marketed an electric shaver. The spin dryer was unveiled and the icebox made way for the Frigidaire.
TAIWAN BORN
China’s civil war dragged on till 1949 when the Communist Red Army led by Mao Zedong defeated Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang troops. Chiang and supporters retreated to the island of Formosa, now known as Taiwan, while Mao’s victorious army entered Beijing and established the People’s Republic of China.
EYE ON BIG BROTHER
George Orwell’s Animal Farm, a satire and political fable based on the Bolshevik revolution and Joseph Stalin’s tyrannical use of the Marxist state, was published in 1945. Four years later, Orwell wrote 1984, which presented a dystopian vision of a totalitarian state. Even today, the term ‘Orwellian’ resonates with those who fear surveillance by an omnipresent government.
BRADMAN BOWS OUT
After a career of extravagant scores, Donald Bradman hung up his gloves exactly a year after freedom at midnight – August 14, 1948. His final stint on Australian soil was a five-test series where he averaged 178.75 against an Indian side led by Lala Amarnath. He retired after an Ashes tour of England in which he led the team to a 4-0 win but ended with the infamous duck in his last innings.
WAR ON CANCER
In 1950, chemist Gertrude Elion’s work on nucleic acids showed certain chemicals could disrupt the formation of leukemia cells. Over the decades, this helped develop chemotherapy cycles. She and her mentor George Hitchings won the Nobel in 1980 for their “discoveries of important principles for drug treatment.”
POLIO CRIPPLED
On March 26, 1953, American researcher Dr Jonas Salk announced on a national radio show that he had successfully tested a vaccine against the crippling disease of polio. Salk injected himself, his wife, and their three sons with his experimental poliovirus vaccine.
SWAPPING ORGANS
Physician Joseph Murray performed the first human kidney transplantation on December 23, 1954, in Boston. The transplant took place between identical twins and worked for eight years. Murray received the 1990 Nobel Prize in medicine.