In 1928, Grigory Landsberg and Leonid Mandelstam at the Moscow State University independently discovered the Raman effect. They published their findings in July issue of Naturwissenschaften, and presented their findings at the Sixth Congress of the Russian Association of Physicists held at Saratov between 5 and 16 August. In 1930, they were nominated for the Nobel Prize alongside Raman. According to the Nobel Committee, however: (1) the Russians did not come to an independent interpretation of their discovery as they cited Raman's article; (2) they observed the effect only in crystals, whereas Raman and Krishnan observed it in solids, liquids and gases, and therefore proved the universal nature of the effect; (3) the problems concerning the intensity of Raman and infrared lines in the spectra had been explained during the previous year; (4) the Raman method had been applied with great success in different fields of molecular physics; and (5) the Raman effect had effectively helped to check the symmetry properties of molecules, and thus the problems concerning nuclear spin in atomic physics.
The Nobel Committee proposed only Ramans name to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for the Nobel Prize. Evidence later appeared that the Russians had discovered the phenomenon earlier, a week before Raman and Krishnans discovery. According to Mandelstam's letter (to Orest Khvolson), the Russian had observed the spectral line on 21 February 1928.