Ideas

One response for the living and the non-living

He found that metals tire and recover under repeated stimulus much as muscle does. He argued at Paris in 1900 that no sharp line divides living and non-living matter. His 1902 book set out the case. Physiologists of his day disliked a physicist making it.

the response phenomena are exhibited not only by plants but by inorganic substances as well

Response in the Living and Non-Living (1902)

Project Gutenberg: Response in the Living and Non-Living (Longmans, Green, 1902) · Scroll: Why JC Bose is feted in India although he was mostly a marginal scientific figure in his lifetime, by Kapil Subramanian (23 November 2017) · Bose Institute: Founder

Optics with very short radio waves

Hertz worked with long waves. Bose went down to wavelengths of about 5 mm. Short waves let him study reflection, refraction and polarisation on a bench in a small laboratory. He built a spark transmitter, a dielectric lens, a polariser, a horn antenna and a diffraction grating for the work.

IEEE Milestone: First Millimeter-wave Communication Experiments by J.C. Bose, 1894–96 (dedicated September 2012) · Britannica: Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose

A semiconductor detector before semiconductors

His point-contact detectors used contacts between metals and crystals. The device in his 1899 paper is now described as a semiconductor diode. His 1904 US patent covered a detector of this kind. The Nobel laureate Nevill Mott later praised the work.

In fact, he had anticipated the existence of P-type and N-type semiconductors

Nevill Mott, as quoted by the Bose Institute

Proceedings of the IEEE: P. K. Bondyopadhyay, Sir J. C. Bose diode detector received Marconi’s first transatlantic wireless signal of December 1901 (January 1998) · Bose Institute: Founder · Britannica: Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose

Knowledge without patents

He showed how his coherer was built at the Royal Institution in 1897. He was critical of the patent system and let his one US patent lapse. A telegraphy businessman offered to patent his work and share the profit. He refused. Patenting was discouraged at the Bose Institute.

It is not the inventor but the invention that matters.

To his nephew, as reported by ThePrint (2020)

British Library: Sir Jagadis Chandra Bose, the man who almost invented the radio · Wikipedia: Jagadish Chandra Bose · ThePrint: J.C. Bose, the father of radio science forgotten by the West due to his aversion to patents (30 November 2020)

Plants signal with electricity

He held that stimuli travel through plants as electrical signals and not only by chemicals. He worked on Mimosa and the telegraph plant Desmodium. He traced the signal to the phloem. Plant scientists accepted electrical signalling in plants by the 1990s.

Wikipedia: Jagadish Chandra Bose · Science and Culture: V. A. Shepherd, At the roots of plant neurobiology, a brief history of the biophysical research of J. C. Bose (2012) · Plant, Cell & Environment: Calvo, Sahi and Trewavas, Are plants sentient? (2017)

Build the instrument yourself

He designed recorders that wrote down movements too small to see. The crescograph magnified growth ten thousand times. His institute kept the habit and built many instruments in-house. Its museum still holds his originals.

Nature: J. C. Bose, Researches on growth of plants, the high magnification crescograph (1920) · Britannica: Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose · Bose Institute: History · Bose Institute: Museum

A laboratory as a temple

He gave the Bose Institute to the nation in 1917 on his birthday. He wanted it to advance science and spread knowledge. He showed his experiments in its entrance hall to visitors.

I dedicate today this Institute—not merely a Laboratory but a Temple.

Founding address, 30 November 1917

Wikipedia: Jagadish Chandra Bose · Bose Institute: History · Bose Institute: Museum

Equal pay for equal work

He would not take one-third of a European’s pay for the same job. He went unpaid for three years and kept teaching. The authorities gave way. Pallava Bagla calls him the first satyagrahi.

The Tribune: Bose led the way with his satyagraha, by Pallava Bagla (22 August 2022) · Wikipedia: Jagadish Chandra Bose

Science told in Bengali

In 1896 he wrote a story in which a bottle of hair oil calms a storm at sea. He rewrote it as Palatak Toofan in his 1921 Bengali collection Abyakta. It is counted among the first works of Bengali science fiction.

Strange Horizons: Introduction to Runaway Cyclone (30 September 2013) · Wikipedia: Jagadish Chandra Bose

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