Most physicists learn they’ve won a Nobel prize after being phoned up by the Swedish Academy of Sciences. But, as Preetish Kakoty discovers, the Indian physicist C V Raman was so convinced he would win in 1930 that he went to Sweden before the news had even been announced

Cocksure and confident C V Raman sailed to Stockholm in 1930 convinced he’d win that year’s Nobel Prize in Physics. (Photograph by A Bortzells Tryckeri, courtesy of AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, W F Meggers Gallery of Nobel Laureates Collection)

How confident, or perhaps delusional, do you have to be to travel to Stockholm because you’re so certain you’ll be awarded a Nobel prize? Most of us wouldn’t have the time, money or self-belief to go to Sweden and hang out at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on the off-chance that we might win.…