Century Snapshots 1917

A prophet of his age. That was the Spectator decribing Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose. 8220;The culture of thirty centuries has blossomed into a scientific brain of an order which we cannot duplicate in the West. Professor Bose is a prince among research workers and a prophet of his age,8221; it wrote.

Born in 1858 in Mymensingh, which falls in present-day Bangladesh, Bose studied in St Xavier8217;s College, Calcutta. He later graduated in natural science from Christ8217;s College, Cambridge. Returning to India, he entered what proved to be the most productive and creative phase of his life.

His pioneering work in the field of electro-magnetic waves led him to a general theory regarding the response of inorganic materials to external stimuli. His invention of a machine called the crescograph, which could detect and record plant movement, proved crucial in helping him extendhis theory to living organisms as well.

Yet, in 1902, when the results of Bose8217;s were published, they were rather coldly received. It wasn8217;t until 18 years later that he was elected to the Royal College. But the indifference did not faze Bose in the slightest.

He continued with his research and wrote many papers and books on plant sensitivity, the physiology of sap flow and photosynthesis and so on. And he did all this while working in the modest ambience of his laboratory in Presidency College, Calcutta, where he taught. His instruments were primitive, his assistants were untrained.

Rabindranath Tagore, a great friend of Bose, once observed with characteristic perspicacity,8220;I found in him Bose a dreamer, and it seemed to me, what surely was a half-truth, that it was more his magical instinct than the probing of his reason which startled out secrets of nature before sudden flashes of his imagination.8221;

Bose, it is widely believed, wanted to join the freedom struggle after his return to India by theend of the 19th century. But, according to scholars, he was dissuaded from doing so by Swami Vivekananda who told him to devote his life and times to the cause of science. Bose evidently took the advice seriously. The result was years of dedicated research. And on November 30, 1917, two years after he had officially retired as a professor in Presidency College, the Bose Research Institute was formally opened in Calcutta.

At that juncture Bose had commented: 8220;The advancement of science is the principal object of the institute and also the diffusion of knowledge.8221; He believed in the 8220;fundamental fact that there can be but one truth, one science which includes all branches of knowledge8221;.