Jagadish Chandra Bose
Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose (;, ; 30 November 1858 – 23 November 1937) was a biologist, physicist, botanist and an early writer of science fiction. He pioneered the investigation of radio and microwave optics, made significant contributions to plant science, and was a major force behind the expansion of experimental science on the Indian subcontinent. IEEE named him one of the fathers of radio science. Bose is considered the father of Bengali science fiction, and also invented the crescograph, a device for measuring the growth of plants. A crater on the moon has been named in his honour. He founded  Bose Institute, a premier research institute of India and also one of its oldest. Established in 1917, the institute was the first interdisciplinary research centre in Asia. He served as the Director of Bose Institute from its inception until his death. Born in Munshiganj, Bengal Presidency, during British governance of India (now in Bangladesh), Bose graduated from St. Xavier's College, Calcutta (now Kolkata, West Bengal, India). He went to the University of London, England to study medicine, but could not pursue studies in medicine because of health problems. Instead, he conducted his research with the Nobel Laureate Lord Rayleigh  at Cambridge and returned to India. He joined the Presidency College of the University of Calcutta as a professor of physics. There, despite racial discrimination and a lack of funding and equipment, Bose carried on his scientific research. He made progress in his research into radio waves in the microwave spectrum and was the first to use semiconductor junctions to detect radio waves. Bose subsequently made a number of pioneering discoveries in plant physiology. He used his own invention, the Crescograph, to measure plant response to various stimuli, and thereby scientifically proved parallelism between animal and plant tissues. Although Bose  filed for a patent for one of his inventions because of peer pressure, his objection to any form of patenting was well known. To facilitate his research, he constructed automatic recorders capable of registering extremely slight movements; these instruments produced some striking results, such as quivering of injured plants, which Bose interpreted as a power of feeling in plants. His books include "Response in the Living and Non-Living" (1902) and "The Nervous Mechanism of Plants" (1926). In a 2004 BBC poll, Bose was voted seventh "Greatest Bengali of all time". He spent the last years of his life in  Giridih. Here he lived in the house located near Jhanda Maidan. This building was named Jagdish Chandra Bose Smriti Vigyan Bhavan. It was inaugurated on 28 February 1997 by the then Governor of Bihar AR Kidwai. Early life and education. Jagadish Chandra Bose was born in a Bengali Kayastha family in Munsiganj (Bikrampur), Bengal Presidency (present-day Bangladesh) on 30 November 1858, to Bama Sundari Bose and Bhagawan Chandra Bose. His father was a leading member of the Brahmo Samaj and worked as a civil servant with the title Deputy Magistrate and Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) in several places , including Faridpur and Bardhaman. Bose's father sent Bose to a Bengali language school for his early education, as it was important to him that his son should study in his native language and culture before studying in English. Speaking at the Bikrampur Conference in 1915, Bose described the effect this early education had on him: Bose joined the Hare School in Kolkata in 1869, followed by St. Xavier's School, also in Kolkata. In 1875, he passed the entrance examination of the University of Calcutta and was admitted to St. Xavier's College, Kolkata. There, he met Jesuit Father  Eugene Lafont, who played a significant role in developing his interest in natural sciences. He received a BA from the University of Calcutta in 1879. Bose wanted to follow his father into the Indian Civil Service, but his father forbid it, saying his son should be a scholar who would “rule nobody but himself.” Bose went to England to study medicine at the University of London, but had to quit because of ill health, possibly worsened by the chemicals used in the dissection rooms. Through the recommendation of Anandamohan Bose, his brother-in-law and the first Indian Wrangler at  the University of Cambridge, Bose secured admission in Christ's College, Cambridge to study natural sciences. He received a BA (Natural Sciences Tripos) from the University of Cambridge, a BSc from the University College London affiliated under University of London in 1884, and a DSc from the University College London, University of London in 1896. Among Bose's teachers at Cambridge were Lord Rayleigh, Michael Foster, James Dewar, Francis Darwin, Francis Balfour, and Sidney Vines. While at Cambridge, he met University of Edinburgh student Prafulla Chandra Roy, with whom he became intimate friends. In 1887, Bose married feminist and social  worker Abala Bose. Radio research. Bose became interested in radio following the 1894 publication of the work of British physicist Oliver Lodge, who studied electromagnetic radiation in the 1890s. Bose realised the disadvantages of studying the light-like properties of long radio waves, and in follow-up research, managed to reduce the waves to the millimetre level (about 5 mm wavelength). During this time, he was supported financially by the social activist nun Sister Nivedita. During a November 1894 (or 1895) public demonstration at Town Hall of Kolkata, Bose ignited gunpowder and rang a bell at a distance using millimetre  range wavelength microwaves. Lieutenant Governor Sir William Mackenzie witnessed Bose's demonstration in the Kolkata Town Hall. In an essay, Bose noted the potential for wireless communications via radio waves. Bose submitted his first scientific paper, "On polarisation of electric rays by double-refracting crystals," to the Asiatic Society of Bengal in May 1895. His submitted his second, "On a new electro-polariscope," to the Royal Society of London in October 1895, and it was published by "The Electrician" in December 1895. The paper described Bose's plans for a "coherer", a term coined by Lodge referring to radio wave  receivers, which he intended to "perfect" but never patented. The paper was well received by "The Electrician" and "The Englishman", which in January 1896 commented: Bose went to London on a lecture tour in 1896 and met Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi, who had been developing a radio wave wireless telegraphy system for over a year and was trying to market it to the British post service. In an interview, Bose expressed his disinterest in commercial telegraphy and suggested others use his research work. In 1899, Bose announced the development of a ""iron-mercury-iron coherer with telephone detector"" in a  paper presented at the Royal Society, London. Place in radio development. Bose's work in radio microwave optics was specifically directed towards studying the nature of the phenomenon and was not an attempt to develop radio into a communication medium. His experiments took place during this same period (from late 1894 on) when Guglielmo Marconi was making breakthroughs on a radio system specifically designed for wireless telegraphy and others were finding practical applications for radio waves, such as Russian physicist Alexander Stepanovich Popov radio wave based lightning detector, also inspired by Lodge's experiment. Although Bose's work was not  related to communication he, like Lodge and other laboratory experimenters, probably had an influence on other inventors trying to develop radio as communications medium. Bose was not interested in patenting his work and openly revealed the operation of his galena crystal detector in his lectures. A friend in the US persuaded him to take out a US patent on his detector but he did not actively pursue it and allowed it to lapse." Bose was the first to use a semiconductor junction to detect radio waves, and he invented various now-commonplace microwave components. In 1954, Pearson and Brattain gave  priority to Bose for the use of a semi-conducting crystal as a detector of radio waves. In fact, further work at millimetre wavelengths was almost non-existent for the following 50 years. In 1897, Bose described to the Royal Institution in London his research carried out in Kolkata at millimetre wavelengths. He used waveguides, horn antennas, dielectric lenses, various polarisers and even semiconductors at frequencies as high as 60 GHz. Much of his original equipment is still in existence, especially at the Bose Institute in Kolkata. A 1.3 mm multi-beam receiver now in use on the NRAO 12   Metre Telescope, Arizona, US, incorporates concepts from his original 1897 papers. Sir Nevill Mott, Nobel Laureate in 1977 for his own contributions to solid-state electronics, remarked that "J.C. Bose was at least 60 years ahead of his time. In fact, he had anticipated the existence of P-type and N-type semiconductors." Plant research. Bose conducted most of his studies in plant research on "Mimosa pudica" and "Desmodium gyrans" plants. His major contribution in the field of biophysics was the demonstration of the electrical nature of the conduction of various stimuli (e.g., wounds, chemical agents) in plants, which were  earlier thought to be of a chemical nature. In order to understand the heliotropic movements of plants (the movement of a plant towards a light source), Bose invented a torsional recorder. He found that light applied to one side of the sunflower caused turgor to increase on the opposite side. These claims were later proven experimentally. He was also the first to study the action of microwaves in plant tissues and corresponding changes in the cell membrane potential. He researched the mechanism of the seasonal effect on plants, the effect of chemical inhibitors on plant stimuli and the effect of  temperature. Study of metal fatigue and cell response. Bose performed a comparative study of the fatigue response of various metals and organic tissue in plants. He subjected metals to a combination of mechanical, thermal, chemical, and electrical stimuli and noted the similarities between metals and cells. Bose's experiments demonstrated a cyclical fatigue response in both stimulated cells and metals, as well as a distinctive cyclical fatigue and recovery response across multiple types of stimuli in both living cells and metals. Bose documented a characteristic electrical response curve of plant cells to electrical stimulus, as well as the decrease and  eventual absence of this response in plants treated with anaesthetics or poison. The response was also absent in zinc treated with oxalic acid. He noted a similarity in reduction of elasticity between cooled metal wires and organic cells, as well as an impact on the recovery cycle period of the metal. Science fiction. In 1896, Bose wrote "Niruddesher Kahini (The Story of the Missing One)", a short story that was later expanded and added to "Abyakta (অব্যক্ত)" collection in 1921 with the new title "Palatak Tuphan (Runaway Cyclone)". It was one of the first works of Bengali science fiction. It  has been translated into English by Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay. Bose Institute. In 1917 Bose established the Bose Institute in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. Bose served as its Director for its first twenty years until his death. Today it is a public research institute of India and also one of its oldest. Bose in his inaugural address on 30 November 1917 dedicated the institute to the nation saying: Legacy and honors. Bose's place in history has now been re-evaluated. His work may have contributed to the development of radio communication. He is also credited with discovering millimetre length electromagnetic waves  and being a pioneer in the field of biophysics. Many of his instruments are still on display and remain largely usable now, over 100 years later. They include various antennas, polarisers, and waveguides, which remain in use in modern forms today. To commemorate his birth centenary in 1958, the JBNSTS scholarship programme was started in West Bengal. In the same year, India issued a postage stamp bearing his portrait. The same year "Acharya Jagdish Chandra Bose", a documentary film directed by Pijush Bose, was released. It was produced by the Government of India's Films Division. Films Division also produced  another documentary film, again titled "Acharya Jagdish Chandra Bose", this time directed by the prominent Indian filmmaker Tapan Sinha. On 14 September 2012, Bose's experimental work in millimetre-band radio was recognised as an IEEE Milestone in Electrical and Computer Engineering, the first such recognition of a discovery in India. On 30 November 2016, Bose was celebrated in a Google Doodle on the 158th anniversary of his birth. The Bank of England has decided to redesign the 50 UK Pound currency note with a prominent scientist. Jagadish Chandra Bose has been featured in that nomination list for his pioneering  work on Wifi technology.