Jagadish Chandra Bose

Who is Jagadish Chandra Bose?

Jagadish Chandra Bose was a pioneering scientist whose work spanned physics, biology and botany, and who is remembered as one of the great polymaths of the Indian subcontinent. Born on 30 November 1858 in the Bikrampur region of the Munshiganj district, in what is now Bangladesh, he was educated in Calcutta and later at Cambridge University. As a physicist he conducted groundbreaking research on radio and microwave optics, generating and detecting very short millimetre-range radio waves and building early wireless apparatus, work that anticipated key developments in radio communication. Turning to plant physiology, he invented the crescograph, a highly sensitive instrument capable of measuring minute growth in plants, and argued that plants respond to stimuli in ways comparable to animals. In 1917 he founded the Bose Institute in Calcutta and was knighted the same year, and in 1920 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He died on 23 November 1937 in Giridih. He is widely honoured as one of the fathers of modern experimental science in the subcontinent and a pioneer of radio and plant science.

Sources: Bose, Jagadish Chandra. Response in the Living and Non-Living, 1902 · Bose, Jagadish Chandra. Plant Response as a Means of Physiological Investigation, 1906 · Encyclopaedia Britannica, entry 'Jagadish Chandra Bose'