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Jagadish Chandra Bose
An indigenous path to strategic research
By Dr Vivekanand
?We should not depend on others to do our work, we ourselves must do our work, but before we can do this, we must get over our pride?. ?Acharya J.C. Bose
JAGADISH Chandra Bose was born on November 30, 1858 in Meymensingh (now in Bangladesh). Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose was one of the earliest torch bearers of modern science in India. His achievements were astounding, that too in the face of colonial discrimination. In 1885, as an Assistant Professor of Physics at Presidency College, Calcutta, he refused to draw his salary for three years because he was offered only half the salary as that of an Englishman for the same post.
Early life
His early education was in a village patshala in the Bengali medium, till the age of 11. Way back a hundred years ago, Bhagawan Chandra Bose, Jagadish Chandra Bose's father started a school in which children were taught in Bengali. Jagadish Chandra Bose also received his early education in this school. Jagadish mixed with the poor boys freely and played with them; gaining first hand knowledge of their sufferings. He learnt much more. He learnt how the fisher folk moved on the wide rivers in their boats, how the fishing rod was cast in the flowing water, how they grew the crops and how the cattle were taken to graze on the distant hills. In 1869, he was sent to Calcutta to learn English and was educated at St. Xavier?s School and College.
At the Royal Institution, London
Bose went to England to study Medicine at the University of London in 1880. But, due to ill health, moved to Cambridge within a year to study Natural Science. In 1884 Bose was awarded a B.A. from Cambridge, but also a B.Sc. from London University. He then returned to Calcutta to take up an assignment as Assistant Professor at Presidency College. It was here that he had demanded equal recognition for an Indian teacher in India. Bose made extensive use of scientific demonstrations in class and was extraordinarily popular and effective as a teacher. Many of his students at the Presidency College were destined to become famous in their own right and one among them was Sathyendra Nath Bose, later to become well known for the Bose-Einstein statistics.
Teacher turns to research
In 1894, at the age of 36, Bose decided to devote himself to pure research. His urge to prove that Indians could do as well or even better than others in the field of scientific research was also instrumental in this. As Tagore wrote to him, Bose was God?s instrument in the removal of India?s shame. Although he did not get any facility or money from the college, he made the equipment he needed within three months and embarked upon his research. He converted a small enclosure adjoining a bathroom in the Presidency College into a laboratory. The training in metal turning and carpentry that he had received in his teens came in handy. Later, this very training enabled him to fabricate many sensitive instruments for plant studies.
A book by Sir Oliver Lodge, Heinrich Hertz and His Successors, impressed Bose. He started his research work in solid-state physics and its applications in microwave. He produced a compact apparatus for generating electromagnetic waves of wavelengths 25mm to 5 mm and studied their quasi-optical properties. These could be demonstrated by his compact apparatus mounted on an ordinary spectrometer table. The originality and simplicity of his apparatus were its remarkable features. He made polarisers and analysers out of pressed jute fibres or books with laminated pages.
Making waves in Calcutta
In 1895 Bose gave his first public demonstration of electromagnetic waves, using them to ring a bell remotely and to explode some gunpowder. In 1896 The Daily Chronicle of England reported: ?The inventor has transmitted signals to a distance of nearly a mile and herein lies the first and obvious and exceedingly valuable application of this new theoretical marvel.?
The first successful wireless signaling experiment by Marconi on Salisbury Plain in England was not until May 1897. The 1895 public demonstration by Bose in Calcutta predates all these experiments. The British magazine The Electrician wrote about Bose?s wireless receivers in its December 1895 issue: ?His sensitive detector of electromagnetic radiation, perfectly prompt in its self-recovery, should serve to revolutionise the existing methods of telegraphy...The coherer devised by Prof. Bose would appear to leave little to be desired and it is certainly more likely to withstand the thousand and one shocks at sea than any of the forms hitherto brought about... Should Professor Bose succeed in perfecting and patenting his coherer, we may in time see the whole system of coast lighting throughout the navigable world revolutionised by the discoveries made by a Bengali scientist working single-handed...?
Invited by Lord Rayleigh, in 1897 Bose reported on his microwave experiments to the Royal Institution and other societies in England. In his presentation to the Royal Institution in January 1897 Bose speculated on the existence of electromagnetic radiation from the sun. Solar emission was not detected until 1942. In 1954, Pearson and Brattain gave priority to Bose for the use of a semiconducting crystal as a detector of radio waves. Sir Neville Mott, Nobel laureate in 1977 for his contributions to solid-state electronics, remarked ?J.C. Bose was at least 60 years ahead of his time? and ?In fact, he had anticipated the existence of P-type and N-type semi-conductors.?
Bose and Marconi
In 1899, Bose came out with solid-state diode. Further, he made a device called ?Coherer? which could transmit and receive radio waves, which used a mercury tube and telephone. He gave a demonstration of this device in front of the then governor.
One of Marconi?s close friends, Luigi Solari, drew Marconi?s attention to the devices invented by Bose. Solari made minor changes in that device, e.g., he changed that U-tube to a straight tube and made a device, which was just a replica of Bose?s instrument and presented it to Marconi. Marconi applied for a patent on that device on September 9, 1901. In 1901, Marconi sent the Morse code ?S? from Poldhu, UK to St. Johns, on the east coast of Canada. There was only one witness to this incident, Mr. Cemp, who received the signal. Marconi was felicitated in the USA and in his country for sending the radio signal across the Atlantic but he never ever mentioned anything in Sir Bose. In several writings, Marconi admitted that he had no education or qualification about radio waves, and it?s true indeed. It?s not possible without any university education, which he didn?t have, at the age of 22. While Marconi used the mercury coherer developed by Bose, as very clearly admitted by Mr. Vivian, who was an assistant to Marconi, in his biography of Marconi, he not only failed to acknowledge the fact, but obviously tried to conceal it.
Nearly 100 years after Guglielmo Marconi?s first transatlantic wireless communication, a group to scientists of the US-based Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers (IEEE) reported that??the origin and first major use of the solid state diode detector devices led to the discovery that the first transatlantic wireless signal in Marconi?s world famous experiment was received by Marconi using the iron-mercury-iron coherer with a telephone detector invented by Sir J.C. Bose in 1898".
Bose?s invention of the ?mercury coherer with a telephone? which Marconi used was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, London, on April 27, 1899, over two years before Marconi?s first wireless communication on December 12, 1901. Investigations by the IEEE group show that both Bose and Marconi were in London in 1896-97. The Italian was conducting wireless experiments for the British post office and Bose was on a lecture tour. Both the scientists were interviewed by McClure?s Magazine (now defunct) in March 1897.
Researches in plant biology
By about the end of the 19th century, the interests of Bose turned away from electromagnatic waves to response phenomena in plants. Bose?s research on response in living and non-living tissues led to some significant findings. In some animal tissues like muscles, stimulation produces change in form as well as electrical excitation, while in other tissues (nerves or retina), stimulation by light produces electric changes only but no change of form. He showed that not only animal but also vegetable tissues under different kinds of stimuli?mechanical, application of heat, electric shock, chemicals, and drugs?produce similar electric responses.
Later days
He retired from the Presidency College in 1915, but was appointed Professor Emeritus. Two years later the Bose Institute was founded. Bose was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1920. He died in 1937, a week before his 80th birthday; his ashes are in a shrine at the Bose Institute in Calcutta.
A rishi of modern times
?...the proprietor of a reputed telegraph company... came himself with a patent form in hand...He proposed to take half of the profit and finance the business in the bargain. This multi-millionaire came to me abegging. My friend, I wish you could see that terrible attachment for gain in this country, that all engaging lucre, that lust for money and more money. Once caught in that trap there would have been no way out for me.?
?J.C. Bose to Rabindranath Tagore in May 1901
After his public lecture in 1897 at the Royal Institution in London, Bose expressed ?surprise that no secret was at any time made as to its (coherer?s) construction, so that it has been open to all the world to adopt it for practical and possibly money-making purposes?. But today India has been facing sanctions for many decades now.
Jagadish Chandra Bose was par excellence the path-finder of independent pursuit of science and technology which could put India on the map of modern societies, even in the teeth of colonial oppression. But the relevance of Bose?s struggle, his discoveries and his philosophy are more relevant to India today than ever. He proved beyond doubt, just as Sir C.V. Raman did later, that scientific research has more to do with ingenuity and intuition than institution and finance.
Great discoveries do not always depend on huge facilities. It is more a question of stimulus and spirit. Culture and nationalism act as strong stimuli powerful enough to stir the creative energies of people.
But education and research in independent India largely failed to emphasise these factors. Here, science was taught to be a western preserve for far too long. We failed to root our science in our tradition. When scientists of other countries praised Bose?s important discoveries, Bose used to say, ?The sages of India knew all this long ago?. But the Indian State disowned our tradition. This has caused havoc with our society. As mentioned at the outset, we should not depend on others to do our work; we ourselves should do our work.
(Vijnana Bharathi)
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