Jagdish Chandra Bose

The nineteenth century saw many great personalities from India emerge in all fields be it freedom fighters, philosophers or scientists. One such great man was Jagdish Chandra Bose who put India on the scientific world map with his ingenuity and scientific flair. He conducted bold experiments in Physics, Botany and Physiology.J.C. Bose was born on November 30, 1858. His father Bhagawan Chandra Bose was a Deputy Magistrate who had a very keen sense of justice and a humanitarian. He had a strong sense of Indian culture and heritage and chose to send his son to a local school instead of one of the prestigious English medium schools preaching western culture.
Bose joined St. Xavier's School in Calcutta and then left for England in 1880 for higher studies. Returning to India in 1885, Bose was appointed Professor of Physics at the Presidency College in Calcutta. However he continued his research work inspite of a hectic work schedule and built a small private laboratory for his experiments.

Did you know?
J.C. Bose shared a close friendship with Rabindranath Tagore. Nobel Laureate Albert Einstein was a colleague J.C. Bose.

Achievements
JC Bose demonstrated the existence and propaganda of wireless waves in 1885. His work on devices for receiving the polarization of electric waves was later exploited by Marconi who designed a long distance radio signalling device.
Bose's continued research in cohering receivers led to a startling discovery. He was able to show the similarity in response of the living and non-living to various types of stress and strains. Based on this theory Bose presented his conclusions in a report at the International Congress of Physics in Paris. Having discovered this similarity to electric response in animal tissue and inorganic substances Bose now started exploring the response in plants to external stimuli. He was able to establish this similarity in plants too. However his theories met with stiff resistance from physiologists who feared that his new theories would upset the old ones and persuaded the Royal Society to not publish his papers on the subject. Another of Bose's amazing achievements was his invention of the 'crescograph'. The crescograph was an electrical instrument that could measure the growth of a plant accurately.
Bose also wrote a number of books and research papers based on his work and findings in both English and Bengali. Several were translated into other European languages too.Bose also wanted his countrymen and youth to cultivate a scientific temper. This dream of his was realized on November 30, 1917 when the Bose Research Institute was set up with the inaugural song composed by Rabindranath Tagore.
Bose was honoured both in India and outside for his contributions to science. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society on May 13, 1920, becoming the first Indian to be honoured by the Royal Society in the field of Science.Suffering from diabetes and high blood pressure, J.C. Bose passed away on November 23, 1937 at the age of 79. However the great legacy that Bose left behind remains an inspiration for the present and the generations to come.