London, Oct. 10: Christ’s College, Cambridge, will mark the 150th birth anniversary of one of its most distinguished students, Jagadish Chandra Bose.
The college describes Bose as “a distinguished Christ’s alumnus who, in 1895, was the first to demonstrate wireless transmission of electromagnetic waves and then moved from physics to plant physiology”.
Widely considered the “founder of modern Indian science”, Bose was born on November 30, 1858, in Mymensingh, East Bengal (now Bangladesh) and died aged 78 on November 23, 1937, in Giridih, Bengal Presidency, in what was still British India.
December 6 has been set aside for a symposium at Christ’s to examine Bose’s far-reaching contributions in the fields of radio waves and plant physiology.
The function honouring Bose is being organised by Peter Landshoff, a physicist at Christ’s who told The Telegraph: “A lot of work on radio was first done by Bose.”
There has long been a debate whether radio was invented by Bose or Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi, with considered opinion now inclining to the view that the breakthrough was achieved by the Indian. Landshoff added that Bose “changed from being a physicist to a plant physiologist, at that time a controversial thing to do”.
In the history of Christ’s — which spells Jagadish as “Jagadis” — Bose figures high on the list of some really famous old boys that include John Milton (1608-1674), Charles Darwin (1809-1882), Jan Smuts (1870-1950) and Earl Mountbatten of Burma (1900-1979).
They are all deemed to “have made major and varied contributions to the intellectual, social, artistic and sporting life of the world”.
Records at Christ’s, now considered the most academically successful of the Cambridge colleges, show Bose, who had previously studied in Calcutta at St Xavier’s College and had a teaching stint at Presidency College, was “admitted to read Natural Sciences at Christ’s in 1882, took his BA in 1884 and MA in 1896”.
Landshoff’s views echo the comments made by another Cambridge scientist, the late Neville Francis Mott, Nobel laureate in 1977 for his own contributions to solid-state electronics, who once said that “J.C. Bose was, at least, 60 years ahead of his time”.
Landshoff has been involved in drawing up a thoughtful series of lectures on December 6 aimed at providing the layman with an insight into the remarkable range of Bose’s research.
Julia Davies (plant sciences, Cambridge) will talk about “How plants cope with salt”; Ray Goldstein on “Propulsion and evolution of algae”; Howard Griffiths (plant sciences, Cambridge) on “What plants teach us about climate change”. Jim Haseloff (plant sciences, Cambridge) on “Generation of plant shapes”; David Klenerman (Christ’s College, Cambridge) on “New ways to watch living cells in action”; and Ulli Steiner (Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge) on “How butterflies get their colour”; M.S. Swaminathan, from Chennai, on “Green genes to manage global warming”; and Simon Tavaré (Christ’s College, Cambridge), on “Genes and flowering times”.
Few Indian scientists have had such recognition in the home of science — and it is not difficult to see why.
Christ’s has kept the following data on Bose which say it all: “Pioneer of electro-magnetic waves and widely regarded as the first modern Indian scientist, Jagadis Chandra Bose was a far-sighted visionary and gifted experimentalist. In 1895 in Calcutta, he publicly demonstrated wireless transmission of electromagnetic waves for the first time anywhere in the world, using the waves to ring a distant bell to thereby explode some gunpowder.
Few Indian scientists have had such recognition in the home of science — and it is not difficult to see why.
Christ’s has kept the following data on Bose which say it all: “Pioneer of electro-magnetic waves and widely regarded as the first modern Indian scientist, Jagadis Chandra Bose was a far-sighted visionary and gifted experimentalist. In 1895 in Calcutta, he publicly demonstrated wireless transmission of electromagnetic waves for the first time anywhere in the world, using the waves to ring a distant bell to thereby explode some gunpowder.
“The Daily Chronicle of England noted in 1896 that ‘the inventor (J.C. Bose) 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’. Bose was also the first to use a semi-conducting crystal as a detector of radio waves.
“Bose was invited by Lord Rayleigh to present his experiments at the Royal Institution in January 1897, attended by Marconi’s business partner who importuned him to take out a patent and share his proceeds with him. Bose refused on the grounds that scientific discoveries must inure to the benefit of the public.
“Marconi’s wireless transmission on Salisbury plain did not occur until May 1897. Bose also crossed from physics into biology, challenging widespread notions that these realms were different – among the fields he is regarded to have anticipated is cybernetics, through his model of memory as an information storage device. His boundless curiosity led him to study the electrical response of plants and the phenomenon of photosynthesis. Freethinking pioneer and icon, Bose was born and educated in rural Bengal and later Calcutta and achieved both a knighthood and international distinction.”
Christ’s has made Jagadish Chandra Bose sound almost as important a Bengali as Sourav Ganguly.
