Satyendra
Nath Bose (Bengali: সত্যেন্দ্র নাথ বসু) was an Indian
physicist specializing in mathematical physics. He was born on
January 1, 1894 in Calcutta. His father Surendranath Bose was employed in the
Engineering Department of the East Indian Railway. He later setup his own chemical
and pharmaceutical company. Satyendra Nath lost his mother at an early
age. His mother’s name was Amodoni Devi. He was the eldest of seven
children. He was the only son, with six sisters after him. Satyendra Nath Bose married Ushabati at the age of 20.
They had nine children. Two of them died in their early childhood.
Satyendra
Nath started to go to school at the age of five. He passed his entrance
examination in 1909 from Hindu School. He stood fifth in the order of merit. As a student of the
Hindu High School he established a new record, scoring 110 marks for a maximum
of 100 in mathematics. He had solved some problems in mathematics by more than
one method. That was why his teacher gave him more marks than the maximum. He next
joined intermediate
science course at the Presidency College,
Calcutta, where he was taught by illustrious teachers as Jagadish Chandra Bose
and Prafulla Chandra Ray.
Satyendra Nath Bose chose mixed (applied) mathematics for his B.Sc. and passed
the examinations standing first in 1913 and again stood first in the M.Sc. mixed
mathematics exam in 1915. It is said that his marks in the M.Sc. examination
created a new record in the annals of the University of Calcutta, which is yet
to be surpassed.
As a polyglot, he was well versed in several languages
such as Bengali, English, French, German and Sanskrit as well as poetry of Lord
Tennyson, Rabindranath Tagore and Kalidasa. He could also play the esraj, a musical instrument similar to a violin.
He was actively involved in running night schools that came to be known as the
Working Men's Institute.
After
completing his M.Sc. Bose joined the University of Calcutta
as a research scholar in 1916 and started his studies in the theory of relativity.
It was an exciting era in the history of scientific progress. Quantum theory had
just appeared on the horizon and important results had started pouring in.
Satyendra
Nath Bose is best known for his work on quantum mechanics, providing the foundation for Bose–Einstein statistics
and the theory of the Bose–Einstein condensate. Bose started his
career in 1916 as a Lecturer in Physics in Calcutta University. He served here
from 1916 to 1921. He joined the newly established Dhaka University in 1921 as a
Reader in the Department of Physics.
Satyendra Nath Bose, along with Saha, presented several papers in
theoretical physics and pure mathematics from 1918 onwards. In 1924, while
working as a Reader at the Physics Department of the University of Dhaka, Bose
wrote a paper deriving Planck’s quantum
radiation law without any reference to classical
physics by using a novel way of counting states with identical
particles. This paper was seminal in creating the very important field of quantum statistics. Though
not accepted at once for publication, he sent the article directly to Albert
Einstein in Germany. Einstein, recognizing the importance of the
paper, translated it into German himself and submitted it on Bose's behalf to
the prestigious Zeitschrift für Physik.
As a result of this recognition, Bose was able to work for two years in
European X-ray and crystallography laboratories, during which he worked with Louis
de Broglie, Marie Curie, and Einstein.
After his stay in Europe, Bose returned to Dhaka in 1926. He was made Head of the Department of
Physics. He continued guiding and teaching at Dhaka
University. Bose designed equipments himself for a X-ray crystallography
laboratory. He set up laboratories and libraries to make the department a
center of research in X-ray spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, magnetic
properties of matter, optical spectroscopy, wireless, and unified field theories. He
also published an equation of state for real
gases with Meghnad Saha. He was also
the Dean of the Faculty of
Science at Dhaka University until 1945. When the partition of India became
imminent, he returned to Calcutta to take up the prestigious Khaira Chair and
taught at University of Calcutta until 1956. He insisted every student to
design his own equipment using local materials and local technicians. He was
made professor
emeritus on his retirement. He then became Vice Chancellor of Visva-Bharati University
in Shanti
Niketan. He returned to the University of Calcutta to continue
research in nuclear physics and complete earlier works in organic chemistry. In
subsequent years, he worked in applied research such as extraction of helium in hot
springs of Bakreshwar.
Apart from physics, he did some research in biotechnology
and literature
(Bengali, English). He made
deep studies in chemistry, geology,
zoology,
anthropology,
engineering
and other sciences.
Being a Bengali,
he devoted a lot of time to promoting Bengali as a teaching language, translating
scientific papers into it, and promoting the development of the region.
In 1937, Rabindranath Tagore
dedicated his only book on science, Visva–Parichay, to Satyendra Nath Bose.
Bose was honored with title Padma
Vibhushan by the Indian Government in 1954. In 1959, he was
appointed as the National Professor, the highest honor in the country for a
scholar, a position he held for 15 years. In 1986, the S.N. Bose National Centre for
Basic Sciences was established by an act of Parliament, Government
of India, in Salt Lake, Calcutta.
Bose became an adviser to the newly formed Council of Scientific and
Industrial Research. He was the President of Indian Physical Society
and the National Institute of Science. He was elected General President of the Indian Science Congress.
He was the Vice President and then the President of Indian Statistical
Institute. In 1958, he became a Fellow of the Royal
Society. He was nominated as member of Rajya
Sabha. Postal
stamp was also released on his name. In reorganization of the services done by
Bose, one of the elementary particles has been named after him as Boson.
Satyendra Nath Bose died on 4th
February 1974 at the age of 80. He was a great populariser of science. He
strongly felt that it was duty to present science to the common man in his own
language. For popularizing science Bose wrote in Bengali. Bose’s work stood at the transition
between the 'old quantum theory' of Planck, Bohr and Einstein and the new
quantum mechanics of Erwin Schrodinger, Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, Paul Dirac and others.
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