Bharatiya Pragna - Dr. Th Chowdary

150th Birth Year
Tribute
(May 1920). He was the
first Indian recipient of this honour.
Bose’s experiments on coherer enabled
Sir Henry Jackson (when he read of them in
1895) to effect communication by electromagnetic
radiation from one end to the other of Defiance,
the British naval Torpedo School Ship
of which he was in command. Earlier, in 1891,
Jackson was seeking some means to announce
his torpedo to a friendly ship by employing the
Hertzian waves, but the idea remained hazy and
impracticable.
Sixty years ahead of his times
Bose’s exposition at the University of
Geneva (1928) enthused Einstein to comment
that a ‘monument of victory’ should be raised
to Jagadish Chandra. Romain Rolland, the great
thinker saluted Bose for succeeding in uniting the
science of the West with the wisdom of the East.
Sir Neville Mott, Nobel Laureate in 1977
for his own contributions to solid-state
electronics, remarked that “JC Bose was at
least 60 years ahead of his time” and “In
fact, he had anticipated the existence of Ptype
and N-type semiconductors.”
Bose was the first, followed by Marconi
In 1895 Bose gave his first public
demonstration of electromagnetic waves, using
them to ring a bell remotely and to explode some
gunpowder. In 1896 the Daily Chronicle of
England reported: “The inventor (JC Bose)
has transmitted signals to a distance of
nearly a mile and herein lies the first and
obvious and exceedingly valuable
application of this new theoretical marvel.”
Popov in Russia was doing similar experiments,
but had written in December 1895 that he was
still entertaining the hope of remote signalling with
radio waves. The first successful wireless
signalling experiment by Marconi on Salisbury
14
Plain in England was not until May 1897. The
1895 public demonstration by Bose in Calcutta
predates all these experiments.
First research institute in India
On 30 th November 1917, Jagadish
Chandra founded the Bose Research Institute in
Calcutta which was the first scientific research
institute in India. The same year a knighthood
was conferred on Bose.
While JC Bose “is known for
demonstrating the World’s first wireless
communication link at a wavelength of 5
mm,” The Encyclopaedia Britannica (1945)
sums up that Bose’s work is “so much in
advance of his time that its precise
evaluation was not possible.”
While dedicating the Bose Institute, he
observed:
“A common reaction seemed to bring
together metal, plant and animal under a
general law…I announced my results before
the Royal Society – results demonstrated
by experiments. But the physiologists
present advised me, after my address, to
confine myself to physical investigations in
which my success had been assured rather
than encroach on their preserve. I had thus
unwittingly strayed into the domain of a new
and unfamiliar caste system and so offended
its etiquette. An unconscious theological
bias was also present which confounds
ignorance with faith…To the theological bias
was added the misgivings about the inherent
bent of the Indian mind towards mysticism
and unchecked imagination…The excessive
specialisation of modern science in the West
has led to the danger of losing sight of the
fundamental fact that there can be but one
truth, one science which includes all
branches of knowledge. How chaotic appear
November & December 2008 Bharatiya Pragna