In 1928, Indian physicist Sir C. V. Raman and his colleague K. S. Krishnan discovered that when light interacts with matter, parts of the scattered light undergo changes in energy due to interaction with molecular vibrations, resulting in what is known as Raman scattering. The discovery laid the foundation for Raman spectroscopy, a technique that takes advantage of these energy changes to create a unique fingerprint of the molecular structure of the material.