Dr. Satyendranath Bose (1884-1974)

Dr. Satyendranath Bose was a legendary figure among the Indian scientists. Born on 01 January 1894 he had his education in the Presidency College, Calcutta. It was Sir J.C Bose who inspired him to devise scientific instrument from the materials available in the country.

In 1924 came Satyendranath’s major theoretical work on Physics known as the Bose-Einstein or simply as Bose statistics. It formed an important amendment to earlier research by Maxwell and Boltzmann on the behaviour of crowds of molecules, known as Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics. Bose detected flaws, which were responsible for a discrepancy in the results of experiments based on them. His paper called Plank Law and Light Quantum Hypothesis was published in 1924. Einstein translated the paper into German and elaborated it.

In 1924 Dr.Bose went to Europe. In Paris he got permission from Madam Curie to work in her laboratory and took certain difficult measurements of the piezo-electric effect, a property exhibited by suitably shaped pieces of quartz under the influence of an alternating current field.

During 1925-26, Dr. Bose worked with Einstein in Germany. After his return, he became Professor and Head of the Department of Physics at Dacca University.

In 1948, he founded Bangiya Vigyan Parishad. He was Chairman of the National Institute of Science in India from 1948 to 1950. From 1956 to 1958, he was the Vice-Chancellor of Viswa-Bharati University. The Royal Society elected him a Fellow in 1958. That year he was also awarded Padma Vibhusan and made a National Professor.

Dr. Bose was a passionate believer in the propagation of scientific knowledge among the people. Rabindranath Tagore dedicated to Dr. Bose the well-known science primer, Visva-Parichaya (Introduction to the Universe).

On 4 February 1974, Dr.Bose passed away at his residence in Calcutta