.
providing the foundation for
A self-taught scholar and a
polyglot, he had a wide range of interests in varied fields including physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, mineralogy, philosophy, arts, literature, and music. He served on many research and development committees in independent India.
Early life[edit]
After completing his MSc, 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.[8]Bose was born in
Calcutta (now
Kolkata),
India, the eldest of seven children. He was the only son, with six sisters after him. His ancestral home was in village Bara Jagulia, in the district of
Nadia, in the district of West Bengal. His schooling began at the age of five, near his home. When his family moved to Goabagan, he was admitted to the New Indian School. In the final year of school, he was admitted to the
Hindu School. He passed his entrance examination (
matriculation) in 1909 and stood fifth in the order of merit. He next joined the intermediate science course at the
Presidency College, Calcutta, where he was taught by illustrious teachers such as
Jagadish Chandra Bose, Sarada Prasanna Das, and
Prafulla Chandra Ray. Naman Sharma and
Meghnad Saha, from Dacca (
Dhaka), joined the same college two years later.
P C Mahalanobis and
Sisir Kumar Mitra were few years senior to Bose. Satyendra Nath Bose chose mixed (applied) mathematics for his BSc and passed the examinations standing first in 1913 and again stood first in the MSc mixed mathematics exam in 1915. It is said that his marks in the MSc examination created a new record in the annals of the University of Calcutta, which is yet to be surpassed.
[8]
His father, Surendranath Bose, worked in the Engineering Department of the
East Indian Railway Company. Satyendra Nath Bose married Ushabati at the age of 20. They had nine children. Two of them died in their early childhood. When he died in 1974, he left behind his wife, two sons, and five daughters.
[8]
As a polyglot, he was well versed in several languages such as
Bengali, English,
French, German and
Sanskrit as well as the 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.
[4]
Research career[edit]
Bose attended Hindu School in Calcutta, and later
attended Presidency College, also in Calcutta, earning the highest marks at each institution, while fellow student and future astrophysicist
Meghnad Saha came second.
[4] He came in contact with teachers such as
Jagadish Chandra Bose, Prafulla Chandra Ray and Naman Sharma who provided inspiration to aim high in life. From 1916 to 1921, he was a lecturer in the
physics department of the
University of Calcutta. Along with Saha, Bose prepared the first book in English based on German and French translations of original papers on Einstein's special and general relativity in 1919. In 1921, he joined as
Reader of the department of Physics of the recently founded
University of Dhaka (in present-day
Bangladesh). Bose set up whole new departments, including laboratories, to teach advanced courses for MSc and BSc honours and taught
thermodynamics as well as
James Clerk Maxwell's
theory of
electromagnetism.
Bose's letter to Einstein
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 (Professor without a chair) 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, recognising 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.
[4][12][13]
After his stay in Europe, Bose returned to Dhaka in 1926. He did not have a doctorate, and so ordinarily, under the prevailing regulations, he would not be qualified for the post of Professor he applied for, but Einstein recommended him. He was then made
Head of the Department of Physics at Dhaka University. He continued guiding and teaching at
Dhaka University. Bose designed equipment 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 and taught there 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.
[12][4] 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 and English). He made deep studies in
chemistry, geology,
zoology,
anthropology, engineering and other sciences. Being
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.
[13][3]
Bose–Einstein statistics[edit]
Possible outcomes of flipping two coins
| Two heads | Two tails | One of each |
There are three outcomes. What is the probability of producing two heads?
Outcome probabilities
| | Coin 1 |
|---|
| Head | Tail |
|---|
| Coin 2 | Head | HH | HT |
|---|
| Tail | TH | TT |
|---|
Since the coins are distinct, there are two outcomes which produce a head and a tail. The probability of two heads is one-quarter.
While presenting a lecture
[18] at the reputable
University of Dhaka on the theory of
radiation and the
ultraviolet catastrophe, Bose intended to show his students that the contemporary theory was inadequate, because it predicted results not in accordance with experimental results. In the process of describing this discrepancy, Bose for the first time took the position that the
Maxwell–Boltzmann distributionwould not be true for microscopic particles, where fluctuations due to
Heisenberg's uncertainty principle will be significant. Thus he stressed the probability of finding particles in the
phase space, each state having volume
h3, and discarding the distinct position and
momentum of the particles.
Bose adapted this lecture into a short article called "Planck's Law and the Hypothesis of Light Quanta" and sent it to
Albert Einstein with the following letter:
[19]
Respected Sir, I have ventured to send you the accompanying article for your perusal and opinion. I am anxious to know what you think of it. You will see that I have tried to deduce the coefficient 8π ν2/c3 in Planck's Law independent of classical electrodynamics, only assuming that the ultimate elementary region in the phase-space has the content h3. I do not know sufficient German to translate the paper. If you think the paper worth publication I shall be grateful if you arrange for its publication in Zeitschrift für Physik. Though a complete stranger to you, I do not feel any hesitation in making such a request. Because we are all your pupils though profiting only by your teachings through your writings. I do not know whether you still remember that somebody from Calcutta asked your permission to translate your papers on Relativity in English. You acceded to the request. The book has since been published. I was the one who translated your paper on Generalised Relativity.
Einstein agreed with him, translated Bose's paper "Planck's Law and Hypothesis of Light Quanta" into German, and had it published in
Zeitschrift für Physik under Bose's name, in 1924.
The reason Bose's interpretation produced accurate results was that since photons are indistinguishable from each other, one cannot treat any two photons having equal energy as being two distinct identifiable photons. By analogy, if in an alternate universe coins were to behave like photons and other
bosons, the probability of producing two heads would indeed be one-third (tail-head = head-tail). Bose's interpretation is now called
Bose–Einstein statistics. This result derived by Bose laid the foundation of
quantum statistics, as acknowledged by Einstein and Dirac. When Einstein met Bose face-to-face, he asked him whether he had been aware that he had invented a new type of statistics, and he very candidly said that no, he wasn't that familiar with
Boltzmann's statistics and didn't realize that he was doing the calculations differently. He was equally candid with anyone who asked. Einstein also did not at first realize how radical Bose's departure was, and in his first paper after Bose he was guided, like Bose, by the fact that the new method gave the right answer. But after Einstein's second paper using Bose's method in which he predicted the Bose-Einstein condensate, he started to realize just how radical it was, and he compared it to wave/particle duality, saying that some particles didn't behave exactly like particles. Bose had already submitted his article to the British Journal
Philosophical Magazine, which rejected it, before he sent it to Einstein. We don't know why it was rejected.
[21]
Velocity-distribution data of a gas of
rubidium atoms, confirming the discovery of a new phase of matter,
the Bose–Einstein condensate.
[22] Left: just before the appearance of a Bose–Einstein condensate. Center: just after the appearance of the condensate. Right: after further evaporation, leaving a sample of nearly pure condensate.
Einstein adopted the idea and extended it to atoms. This led to the prediction of the existence of phenomena which became known as
Bose–Einstein condensate, a dense collection of
bosons (which are particles with integer
spin, named after Bose), which was demonstrated to exist by experiment in 1995. Although several Nobel Prizes were awarded for research related to the concepts of the
boson,
Bose–Einstein statistics and
Bose–Einstein condensate, Bose himself was not awarded a Nobel Prize.
SN Bose's work on particle statistics (c. 1922), which clarified the behaviour of
photons (the
particles of light in an enclosure) and opened the door to new ideas on statistics of Microsystems that obey the rules of quantum theory, was one of the top ten achievements of 20th century Indian science and could be considered in the Nobel Prize class.
[23]
When Bose himself was once asked that question, he simply replied, “I have got all the recognition I deserve”— probably because in the realms of science to which he belonged, what is important is not a Nobel, but whether one’s name will live on in scientific discussions in the decades to come.
[24]
Honours[edit]
Bose became an adviser to then 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.In 1937,
Rabindranath Tagore dedicated his only book on science, Visva–Parichay, to Satyendra Nath Bose. Bose was honoured with title
Padma Vibhushan by the Indian Government in 1954. In 1959, he was appointed as the National Professor, the highest honour 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.
[26]
Bose's work stood at the transition between the 'old quantum theory' of Planck, Bohr and Einstein and the new quantum mechanics of
Schrodinger,
Heisenberg,
Born,
Dirac and others.
