This bust of JC Bose by Biman Das will have an honoured ranking alongside that of Charles Darwin, another famous old boy at Christ’s College

Cambridge, Dec. 7: Christ’s College, Cambridge, has honoured one of its distinguished old boys, Jagadish Chandra Bose, by unveiling a bust to mark his 150th birth anniversary and holding a symposium to recall his remarkable research in the disparate fields of electromagnetic waves and plant life.

Many leading academics spoke of how their work had been anticipated by Bose, a scientist ahead of his time.

There is no longer a debate among scientists about whether it was Bose or Marconi who invented “radio” — Marconi got the credit but it was Bose who got there first with his pioneering work in electromagnetic waves, possibly by as much as two years. Only, he wasn’t very good at public relations.

Good news awaits brilliant Indian students looking for a chance to gain admission to Cambridge University to read natural sciences, the very subject Bose had taken when he came up in 1882.

There will be a couple of places every year under the “JC Bose Scholarship”, tenable at Christ’s College, Cambridge, for students from India. Considering that Christ’s, founded in 1505, is now academically one of the leading Cambridge Colleges, applicants will have to be the best of the best.

Bengalis turned up in impressive numbers yesterday. Everyone from Shiv Shankar Mukherjee, the Indian high commissioner in London; Bikash Sinha, director of the Saha Institute in Calcutta; Sibaji Raha, director of the Bose Institute in Calcutta; and sculptor Biman Behari Das, who has been principal of the Government Art and Crafts College in Calcutta, was there. Some invitees ensured justice was done to the beef stroganoff and rice served in Hall (formal dining room) along with white and red wines from the College cellars.

In Hall, the portraits of its two most famous old boys, Paradise Lost poet John Milton and the Origin of Species author Charles Darwin (Christ’s will mark his 200 th anniversary next year), looked down on time past, present and future. Bose is now said to have equal ranking.

On a crisp, very cold but sunny day, undergraduates were winding up yesterday on the last day of Michaelmas Term. The College bell rang as it would have done in Bose’s time, signifying in some ways the unchanging quality of Cambridge life.

Although Bose is now referred as “Jagadish Chandra Bose” and occasionally as “Jagadis Chandra Bose”, the 24-year-old had signed the College register as “Jogodish Chunder Bose” – as one of the slides used to illustrate a lecture emphasised.

The big question was whether Bose would get into Christ’s if he were to apply for a place today. Long gone are the happy days when Christ’s was a rugby college when, according to legend, candidates flung a ball by Dr Lucan Pratt, the eccentric Admissions Tutor, were admitted if they caught it. They were welcomed with an Open Scholarship if they caught the ball and drop-kicked it into the wastepaper basket.

“Would Bose be let in?” pondered yesterday’s gracious host, Professor Frank Kelly, Master of Christ’s, who informed The Telegraph of his determination to strengthen links with India. “I would like to think he would.”

After the formal end of lectures, the Master did what Masters do best: he dispensed real champagne to his Indian guests in the Master’s Lodge, an essential part of academic life in Cambridge that Bose would have recognised.

Among those to drop in was black tie wearing good Bengali boy, Sir Partha Dasgupta, FBA, FRS, Frank Ramsey Professor of Economics and Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge, who said: “I have to rush because I have a dinner next door at Sidney Sussex.”