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Jagadish Chandra Bose

Bengali polymath, physicist, and biologist (1858-1937)

Jagadish Chandra Bose (Bengali: জগদীশ চন্দ্র বসু; November 30, 1858 – November 23, 1937), popularly called J.C. Bose and formally with all titles known as Acharya Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose, was a Bengali physicist, biologist, botanist, archaeologist, and also author science fictions. His path breaking achievements were the earliest investigations of radio and microwave optics, and startling discoveries on plant science and its related invention of crescograph. He was the founder father of experimental science in the Indian subcontinent given the sobriquet the fathers of radio science. For his outstanding achievements he received world wide acclaim and given the title of Acharya, the Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire (CIE, 1903), Companion of the Order of the Star of India (CSI, 1912), Knight Bachelor (1917) and Fellow of the Royal Society.

Acharya SirJagadish Chandra Bose

Quotes

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  • The true laboratory is the mind, where behind illusions we uncover the laws of truth.

Sources

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India's Great Scientist, J.C. Bose

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Jagadish Chandra Bose in Royal Institution, London

India's Great Scientist, J.C. Bose. Randall Fontes - From the Secret Life of Plants to The Play of Light. Retrieved on 8 December 2013.}

  • I was educated at Cambridge. How admirable is the Western method of submitting all theory to scrupulous experimental verification! That procedure has gone hand in hand with the gift for introspection which is my Eastern heritage. Together they have enabled me to sunder the silences of natural realms long uncommunicative. The telltale charts of my crescograph 2 are evidence for the most skeptical that plants have a sensitive nervous system and a varied emotional life. Love, hate, joy, fear, pleasure, pain, excitability, r, and countless appropriate responses to stimuli are as universal in plants as in animals.
  • I have recently returned from an expedition to scientific societies of the West. Their members exhibited intense interest in delicate instruments of my invention which demonstrate the indivisible unity of all life. The Bose crescograph has the enormity of ten million magnifications. The microscope enlarges only a few thousand times; yet it brought vital impetus to biological science. The crescograph opens incalculable vistas.
  • The poet is intimate with truth, while the scientist approaches awkwardly. Come someday to my laboratory and see the unequivocable testimony of the crescograph.

Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose in Vijayaprasara

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Bose's 60 GHz microwave apparatus at the Bose Institute, Kolkata, India.

His receiver (right) used a galena crystal detector inside a horn antenna and galvanometer to detect microwaves. Bose invented the crystal ran victory. To me his life has been one of blessing, and daily thanksgiving. Nevertheless everyone had said that he had wrecked his life, which was meant for greater things. Few realize that out of the skeletons of myriad lives have been built vast continents. And it is on the wreck of a life like his, and of many such lives, that will be built the greater India yet to be. We do not know why it should be so; but we do know that the Earth-Mother is always calling for sacrifice.

  • From his (Karna’s) low caste came rejection, came every disadvantage; but he always played and fought fair! So his life, though a series of disappointments and defeats to the very end – his slaying by Arjuna– appealed to me as a boy as the greatest of triumphs. I still think of the tournament where Arjuna had been victor, and then of Karna coming as a stranger to challenge him. Questioned of name and birth, he replies, “I am my own ancestor! You do not ask the might Ganges from which of its many springs it comes: its own flow justifies itself, so shall my deeds me! [Further he wrote :] Like that of my boyhood’s hero Karna, my life has been ever one of combat and must be to the last. It is not for man to complain of circumstances, but bravely to accept, to confront, and to dominate them.
    • The character of Karna in Mahabharata influenced him deeply.
  • I have sought permanently to associate the advancement of knowledge with the widest possible civic and public diffusion of it; and this without any academic limitations, henceforth to all races and languages, to both men and women alike, and for all time coming.
  • Not in matter but in thought, not in possessions nor even in attainments but in ideals, is to be found the seed of immortality. Not through material acquisition but in generous diffusion of ideas and ideals can the true empire of humanity be established. Thus to Asoka, to whom belonged this vast empire, bound by the inviolate seas, after he had tried to ransom the world by giving away to the utmost, there came a time when he had nothing more to give, except one half of an Amlaki fruit. This was his last possession, and his anguished cry was that since he had nothing more to give, let the half of the Amlaki be accepted as his final gift.
  • Ashoka’s emblem of the Amlaki will be seen on the cornices of the Institute, and towering above all is the symbol of thunderbolt. It was the RishiDadhichi, the pure and blameless, who offered his life that the divine weapon, the thunderbolt, might be fashioned out of his bones to smite evil and exalt righteousness. It is but half of the Amlaki that we can offer now. But the past shall be reborn in a yet nobler future. We stand here today and resume work tomorrow, so that by the efforts of our lives and our unshaken faith in the future we may all help to build the greater India yet to be.

Science and National Consciousness in Bengal: 1870-1930

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Lourdusamy, J. (1 January 2004). Science and National Consciousness in Bengal: 1870-1930. Orient Blackswan. pp. 106–. ISBN 978-81-250-2674-7. 

  • They would be our worst enemy who would wish us to live only on the glories of the past and die off from the face of the earth in sheer passivity. By continuous achievement alone we can justify our great ancestry. We do not honour our ancestors by the false claim that they are omniscient and had nothing more to learn.
    • In page=106
  • Capacity to endure through infinite transformation must be innate in that mighty civilization which has seen the intellectual culture of the Nile Valley of Assyria and of Babylon wax and wane and disappear, and which today gazes on the future with the same invincible faith with which it met the past.
    • In page=106
  • Nothing can be more vulgar or more untrue than the ignorant assertion that the world owes its progress of knowledge of any particular race. The whole world is interdependent and a constant stream of thought has throughout ages enriched the common heritage of mankind. It is the realization of this mutual interdependence that has kept the mighty fabric bound together and ensured the continuity of permanence of civilization.
    • In pages=106-97
  • [Science] was a human heritage] belonging neither to the East or the West.
    • In page=107

About J.C.Bose

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Acharya Bhavan, the residence of J C Bose built in 1902, has been turned to museum in Calcutta
 
The Bose Research Institute in Calcutta
  • The unique throb of life in all creation could seem only poetic imagery before your advent, Professor! A saint I once knew would never pluck flowers. 'Shall I rob the rosebush of its pride in beauty? Shall I cruelly affront its dignity by my rude divestment?' His sympathetic words are verified literally through your discoveries!"
    • Quoted in "India's Great Scientist, J.C. Bose"
  • Sir J.C. Bose's pioneering works in quasi-optic millimeter wave research in Calcutta, India about 100 years back during 1890s are highlighted. He developed an elegant millimeter wave spark transmitter, self recovering coherer detector, wire grid polariser, cylindrical diffraction grating, dielectric lens and prism, rectangular waveguide, horn antenna and microwave absorber, for the studies of reflection, refraction, absorption and polarisation of millimeter waves and its application to wireless remote control for firing a gun. All these pioneering activities indicate that he was well ahead of his time and prompted us to call him the "Father of Radio Science".
  • Then afterwards, when victory is yours, we too-all of us Bengalis-will share in the honour and the glory. We do not need to understand what is it that you have done. Or to have given you any thought, time or money, but the moment we hear the chorus or praises in The Times from the lips of the Englishmen we shall lap it up. Some important news papers in our country will observe we are not inferior men; and another paper will observe we are making discovery after discovery in science. Earlier we shall not have felt an iota of responsibility towards you, but when victory has been won and you return home bearing a crop of records, then you will be one of us. Soughing and ploughing you will do alone; reaping we shall do together. The victory you will find will be more ours than yours.
    • After his recognition by the west Rabindranath Tagore wrote to Bose. Quoted in "Science and National Consciousness in Bengal: 1870-1930", pages=107-08
  • O Hermit, call thou in the authentic words
    Of that old hymn called Sama; "Rise! Awake!
    Call to the man who boasts his shastric lore
    From vain pedantic wranglings profitless,
    Call to that foolish braggart to come forth
    Out on the face of nature, this broad earth,
    Send forth this call unto thy scholar band;
    Together round thy sacrifice of fire
    Let them all gather. So may our India,
    Our ancient land unto herself return
    O once again return to steadfast work,
    To duty and devotion, to her trance
    Of earnest meditation; let her sit
    Once more unruffled, greedless, strifeless, pure,
    O once again upon her lofty seat
    And platform, teacher of all lands.
    • The poem composed by Rabindranath Tagore in honour of his friend Bose's achievements. Quoted in India's Great Scientist, J.C. Bose
  • ...the "Resonant Cardiograph," Bose then pursued extensive researches on innumerable Indian plants. An enormous unsuspected pharmacopoeia of useful drugs was revealed. The cardiograph is constructed with an unerring accuracy by which a one-hundredth part of a second is indicated on a graph. Resonant records measure infinitesimal pulsations in plant, animal and human structure. The great botanist predicted that use of his cardiograph will lead to vivisection on plants instead of animals.
    • Quoted in India's Great Scientist, J.C. Bose.

Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose in Vijayaprasara

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  • To bringing about the scientific renaissance (In India) Sir Jagadish had influentially contributed. Indians are justly proud of the possession of a few men who have gained world-wide reputation in their particular fields of activity, and this pride reacts strongly on public opinion. At the Research Institute a group Indian post-graduate students devote their lives to research. The published Transactions of the Institute show that under the leadership of this eminent Bengali, Indian research is making substantial contribution to scientific knowledge, that in this field there is no fundamental difference between the Western and the Eastern mind, as was assumed when Sir Jagadish began his work.
    • By Times after the inauguration of the his research institute on 23rd November 1917.
  • The generally accepted interpretation of Jagadish Chandra’s scientific activities is that he had essentially the biologist’s conception of Nature; lack of opportunities for biological studies while as a student in Calcutta and later lack of any teaching post in biology, induced Jagadish Chandra to take up the post of teacher in physics.
    • By D.M. Bose
  • Bose was a physicist and a physicist he remained in his outlook to the very end.
    • By Meghanad Saha
  • He (Bose) was modern India’s first physicist after all, one of her very first scientists. He was his motherland’s first active participant in the Galilean - Newtonian tradition. He had confounded the British disbeliever. He had shown that the Eastern mind was indeed capable of the exact and exacting thinking demanded by western science. He had broken the mould.
    • By S. Dasgupta
  • Bose was the first Indian to be admitted in person to the sanctum sanctorum of English, thus western science.
    • Subrata Dasgupta.
  • Our investigative research into the origin and first major use of 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.
    • By "The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers" (IEEE)
  • His model of an electric eye which records with electric signals message received from outside world, his physical model of memory as a mechanism for storing information justified this being considered a precursor of the modern discipline of cybernetics.
    • Observation of Bose Institute.
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