जगदीश चन्द्र बसु Jagadish Chandra Bose

Life and career

  1. 1858 · Born in Mymensingh. Born on 30 November 1858 in Mymensingh in eastern Bengal. His father was a Brahmo Samaj member and a deputy magistrate. He sent his son first to a Bengali-language school. Bose later recalled boyhood friends who were the sons of a Muslim attendant and a fisherman. (Wikipedia: Jagadish Chandra Bose)
  2. 1875 · St Xavier’s and Father Lafont. He joined Hare School in 1869 and St Xavier’s College in Calcutta in 1875. There the Jesuit Father Eugene Lafont drew him to natural science. He took his BA in 1879. (Wikipedia: Jagadish Chandra Bose)
  3. 1880 · London and Cambridge. He went to London to study medicine but gave it up through ill health. He took a BSc at University College London in 1883. At Christ’s College Cambridge he studied natural sciences under teachers who included Lord Rayleigh and Francis Darwin. He met Prafulla Chandra Ray there. (Wikipedia: Jagadish Chandra Bose · British Library: Sir Jagadis Chandra Bose, the man who almost invented the radio · Britannica: Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose)
  4. 1885 · Presidency College and the pay protest. He became a professor of physics at Presidency College in January 1885. Indian professors drew two-thirds of a European’s pay. His officiating post halved that again. He refused his salary and taught unpaid for three years. The college later made his post permanent with retrospective effect. (Wikipedia: Jagadish Chandra Bose · The Tribune: Bose led the way with his satyagraha, by Pallava Bagla (22 August 2022) · 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))
  5. 1895 · Millimetre waves in Calcutta. He began radio research in November 1894. His first paper went to the Asiatic Society of Bengal in May 1895. In 1895 he sent waves of about 60 GHz 23 metres through two walls to ring a bell and fire gunpowder. Accounts place a public show at the Town Hall in November before Lieutenant Governor Sir William Mackenzie. Subrata Dasgupta calls his papers in The Electrician that year the first scientific papers by an Indian. (IEEE Milestone: First Millimeter-wave Communication Experiments by J.C. Bose, 1894–96 (dedicated September 2012) · Wikipedia: Jagadish Chandra Bose · 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))
  6. 1896 · Europe, Marconi and a story about hair oil. A six-month scientific deputation took him to Europe in 1896. He met Guglielmo Marconi in London. The University of London gave him an honorary DSc. That year he also wrote a Bengali story for a hair-oil company’s competition. It won. (Wikipedia: Jagadish Chandra Bose · Strange Horizons: Introduction to Runaway Cyclone (30 September 2013))
  7. 1897 · The Royal Institution. On 29 January 1897 he gave a Friday Evening Discourse at the Royal Institution in London. He showed his millimetre-wave apparatus and how his coherer was built. The Electric Engineer noted that he made no secret of its construction. (British Library: Sir Jagadis Chandra Bose, the man who almost invented the radio · Bose Institute: Founder)
  8. 1899 · The mercury coherer. On 27 April 1899 the Royal Society heard his paper on an iron-mercury-iron coherer read with a telephone. In 1900 he told the International Congress of Physics in Paris that inorganic and living matter respond alike. (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) · Wikipedia: Jagadish Chandra Bose · Bose Institute: Founder)
  9. 1901 · From metals to plants. On 10 May 1901 he gave a second Royal Institution discourse on electric response in plants. The Royal Society received his paper on organic substances that May but did not publish it in full. In December Marconi received the first transatlantic signal with a detector that Science Museum curators trace to Bose’s 1899 design. (Project Gutenberg: Response in the Living and Non-Living (Longmans, Green, 1902) · Royal Society, Making Science: Unpublished paper ‘On the electric response of organic substances’ by Jagadis Chunder Bose (1901) · Science Museum Group: ‘Italian Navy’ detector, 1899–1901)
  10. 1902 · Response in the Living and Non-Living. His first book came out in 1902. The physiologist Augustus Waller disputed his priority on vegetable electricity in Nature that September. In 1904 he received US Patent 755,840 for his detector. He let it lapse. (Project Gutenberg: Response in the Living and Non-Living (Longmans, Green, 1902) · Nature: Augustus D. Waller, Re vegetable electricity (18 September 1902) · Wikipedia: Jagadish Chandra Bose · Bose Institute: Founder)
  11. 1917 · The Bose Institute. He retired from Presidency College in 1915. On 30 November 1917 he dedicated the Bose Institute in Calcutta and gave the address The Voice of Life. The institute calls itself Asia’s first modern centre for interdisciplinary research. He was knighted the same year. (Britannica: Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose · Bose Institute: History · Wikipedia: Jagadish Chandra Bose)
  12. 1920 · Fellow of the Royal Society. He was elected FRS in 1920. In Nature that year he described the high magnification crescograph. It used two levers to magnify plant growth ten thousand times. (Wikipedia: Jagadish Chandra Bose · Nature: J. C. Bose, Researches on growth of plants, the high magnification crescograph (1920))
  13. 1926 · The Nervous Mechanism of Plants. He dedicated this 1926 book to Rabindranath Tagore. He served on the League of Nations Committee for Intellectual Cooperation from 1924 to 1931. He presided over the Indian Science Congress in 1927. (Bose Institute: Founder · Wikipedia: Jagadish Chandra Bose)
  14. 1937 · Death in Giridih. He spent his last years in Giridih and died there on 23 November 1937. He was 78. The IEEE dedicated a Milestone plaque at Presidency College to his millimetre-wave work in September 2012. Its first J. C. Bose Medal in Wireless Communications went to Seizo Onoe in 2025. (Britannica: Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose · Wikipedia: Jagadish Chandra Bose · IEEE Milestone: First Millimeter-wave Communication Experiments by J.C. Bose, 1894–96 (dedicated September 2012) · NTT: Seizo Onoe to receive the first IEEE Jagadish Chandra Bose Medal (16 December 2024))

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