Read the biography of our legendary scientist Jagadish Chandra Bose
- Nidhesh Kumar
There had been great scientists in
ancient India, but their names and achievements are more or less
legendary today. When the British came to India, the reign of science
had already begun in the West. The leaders of India at the time — men
like Ram Mohan Roy, Dwarakanath Tagore wanted to introduce English
education in order that India might produce scientists of her own.
Almost a pioneer in this respect was Jagadish Chandra Bose, a true son
of India.
J. C. Bose was born in the district of
Dacca on November 30, 1858. His father, Bhagaban Chandra, was a Deputy
Magistrate who was noted for his independence of character. His
influence in his son was deep and abiding. He sent him to Calcutta's St.
Xaviers School. This was a vital step in his career. Here he came under
the influence of Father Lafont, a great scientist, who instilled in
Jagadish a love of science and a desire for making researches in
science. After graduation, Jagadish proceeded to England and entered the
University of Cambridge. He completed his scientific studied,
specializing in Physics, and took his Natural Science Tripos in 1884.
When Jagadish returned to India, he was
offered lectureship in Presidency College, Calcutta, after creating some
bitterness. The post was under the Indian Educational Service,
specially reserved for Europeans so long. This was the first proof of
Jagadish Chandra's dogged determination of which he gave repeated
evidence in his life.
Jagadish was at last placed on the
teaching staff of the Presidency College as a Professor of Physics.
There he served without a break for thirty years. There he taught his
students enchantingly—so clear was his exposition, so fascinating were
his demonstrations. In this college he made those pioneer researches,
first in Physics and then in plant physiology, which have made his name a
household word in India and highly respected all over the scientific
world.
Jagadish Bose's first researches were in
Physics, his own subject. Indeed, he was perhaps the first to send
electric waves without the medium of wires from one room to another and
then to his house about two miles away. His success in wireless
telegraphy preceded Marconi (1911). A few years earlier he had devised
improvements in the telephone receiver but he declined offers to have
them patented. He indignantly refused to commercialise knowledge. It is
now known that a despicable conspiracy deprived J. C. Bose from the
Nobel Prize. Jagadish Bose's next discovery was sensational. He
demonstrated before the Royal Institute of London (in 1901) that there
was no sharp line of demarcation between the living and the non-living,
that matter hitherto regarded as inorganic, responds to electrical
stimuli in the same way as organic bodies do. Bose sought to prove — the
nervous sensitiveness of plant tissues.
This pursuit of one behind the many in
Nature was the moving force in J. C. Bose's life. He discovered in
plants a simple structural identity of animals. He showed by means of
highly delicate and sensitive instruments made by himself that plants
behave in the same manner as animals under similar stimuli. With the
help of his own instruments, he made notable discoveries. He explained
many phenomena in plant life that used to be inexplicable.
Jagadish retired from his professional
work in 1915. He now set about the task of founding an Institute where
he could carry on his researches. On November 30, 1917, he founded and
dedicated the Bose Institute, as a home of scientific research where
scholars from all parts of the world might meet. Here he worked on with a
single-minded devotion. He published his papers regularly.
The last years of his life were devoted
entirely to his researches. His great ambition was to establish the
unity of plant life and animal life. His greatness lay in pressing
imagination into the service of science and his discoveries in that
realm rank among the highest yet apprehended by the mind of man. It is
no wonder that his poetic imagination has found excellent expression in
his Bengali literary writing in the book 'Abyakta' (Inarticulate).
Abyaka is a living testimony to his literary ability. Jagadish Bose died
in 1937, bequeathing his entire wealth and property to the service of
science and humanity.
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