Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose   ( 1858 - 1937 )

Jagadish Chandra Bose was born on 30 November 1858, in Myemsingh, Faridpur, a part of Dhaka District now in Bangladesh. He attended the village school till he was 11 year old. Then he moved to kolkata where he enrolled in St. Xavier's. He was very much interested in Biology. However His Father Mr. Lafont , a famous Professor of Physics, inspired in Bose a great interest in Physics.

Having Obtained his B.A. in Physical Sciences. At the age of Twenty-two year old Bose left for London, to obtain the medical degree. However, He kept falling ill and had to discontinue his to be a Doctor. Then he obtain his B.A. degree from Christ College, Cambridge.

                                     

He returned to India in 1885 and the Presidency College, Kolkata as an Assistant professor of  Physics, where he remained till 1915. There was a peculiar practice in the College at the time. The Indian Teachers were paid! So Bose refused his salary  but worked for three years. The fourth year he was paid in full ! He was an excellent teacher, Extensively using scientific demonstration in class.  Some of his student, such as S.N. Bose went to become the famous Physicists themselves.

During thus period, Bose also started doing original scientific work in the area of microwave, carrying out experiments involving refraction, Diffraction and polarization.

He developed the use of galena crystals for making receivers, both for short wavelength radio waves, using them to ring a bell remotely and to explode some gunpowder.

Many of the microwave components familiar today - waveguides,  horn, antennas, polarizers, dielectric lenses and prisms, and semi-conductor detectors of electromagnetic radiation - were invented and used by Bose in the last decade of he nineteenth century. He also suggested the existence of electromagnetic radiation from the sun, which was confirmed in 1944. 

Bose then turned his attention to response phenomena in plants. He showed that not only animal but plant tissues produce similar electric views under different kinds of stimuli - Like Mechanical, Thermal, Electrical, and chemical.

Bose was kinghted in 1917 and soon thereafter elected fellow of the Royal Society, London {Both as Physicist ant biologist!}. Bose had worked all along without the right kind of scientific instruments and Laboratory. For a long time he had been thinking of building a laboratory. The result was the establishment of the Bose Research Institute in Kolkata. It continue to be a famous center of research in Basic Sciences.