Jagdish Chandra Bose Biography : Inventions, Facts and Pictures

Jagdish Chandra Bose (जगदीश चंद्र बोस) famous Indian scientistsBiography: Inventions, Facts, and Pictures. Jagdish Chandra Bose (JC Bose) was born on November 30, 1858, in Mymensingh (now in Bangladesh). His father Bhagaban Chandra Bose was a Deputy Magistrate. Jagadish Chandra Bose had his early education in a village school in Bengal medium. In 1869, Jagadish Chandra Bose was sent to Calcutta to learn English and was educated at St.Xavier’s School and College. He was a brilliant student. He passed the B.A. in physical sciences in 1879. In 1880, Jagdishchandra Bose went to England. He studied medicine at London University, England, for a year but gave it up because of his own ill health. Within a year he moved to Cambridge to take up a scholarship to study Natural Science at Christ’s College Cambridge. In 1885, he returned from abroad with a B.Sc. degree and Natural Science Tripos (a special course of study at Cambridge).

Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose is one of the most prominent first Indian scientists who proved by experimentation that both animals and plants share much in common. He demonstrated that plants are also sensitive to heat, cold, light, noise and various other external stimuli. Bose contrived a very sophisticated instrument called Crescograph which could record and observe the minute responses because of external stimulants. It was capable of magnifying the motion of plant tissues to about 10,000 times of their actual size, which found many similarities between plants and other living organisms.

Achievements:

He was the first to prove that plants too have feelings.
He invented wireless telegraphy a year before Marconi patented his invention.
Jagdish Chandra Bose was an eminent Indian scientist.
He was the first to prove that plants and metals too have feelings

Contributions and Early Life

1885 onwards

On his return to India in 1885 he was appointed as an officiating professor of physics in Presidency College on the request of Lord Ripon to the Director of Public Instruction.
In his first job, Bose became a victim of racism as his salary was fixed at a much lower level than that of the British professors. As a protest, Bose refused to accept the salary and taught at the college for three years without payment.
After some time the Director of Public Instruction and the Principal of the Presidency College made him permanent and paid him his full salary for the previous three years. Such was the character of J.C. Bose.
There were many other issues in the college as well. The college did not have a proper laboratory and was not conducive to original research. Bose actually funded his research with his own money.
Starting from 1894 he experimented on the Hertzian waves in India and created the shortest radio waves of 5mm. He conducted the first communication experiments in 1895 becoming the pioneer in multimedia communication.
He presented his first scientific paper, ‘On the polarization of Electric Rays by Double Reflecting Crystals’ before the Asiatic Society of Bengal in May 1895. His papers were later published by the Royal Society of London in 1896.
In 1896 he met Marconi who was also working on wireless signaling experiment and in 1899 he developed the “iron-mercury-iron coherer with telephone detector” which he presented at the Royal Society.
He was also a pioneer in the field of biophysics and was the first one to suggest that plants too can feel pain and understand affection.
He was also a writer and authored ‘Niruddesher Kahini’ in 1896 which was the first major work of Bengali science fiction. This story was later translated into English.

1900 onwards

The central hall of the Royal Society in London was jam-packed with famous scientists on May 10, 1901. Everyone seemed to be curious to know how Bose’s experiment will demonstrate that plants have feelings like other living beings and humans. Bose chose a plant whose mots were cautiously dipped up to its stem in a vessel holding the bromide solution. The salts of hydrobromic acid are considered a poison. He plugged in the instrument with the plant and viewed the lighted spot on a screen showing the movements of the plant, as its pulse beat, and the spot began to and fro movement similar to a pendulum. Within minutes, the spot vibrated in a violent manner and finally came to an abrupt stop.
The whole thing was almost like a poisoned rat fighting against death. The plant had died due to the exposure to the poisonous bromide solution.
The event was greeted with much appreciation, however, some physiologists were not content, and considered Bose as an intruder. They harshly knocked the experiment but Bose did not give up and was quite confident about his findings.
Using the Crescograph, he further researched the response of the plants to fertilizers, light rays and wireless waves. The instrument received widespread acclaim, particularly from the Path Congress of Science in 1900. Many physiologists also supported his findings, later on, using more advanced instruments.
He was raised in a home committed to pure Indian traditions and culture. He got his elementary education from a vernacular school because his father thought that Bose should learn his own mother tongue, Bengali, before studying a foreign language like English. Bose attended Cambridge after studying physics at Calcutta University. He returned to India in 1884 after completing a B.Sc. degree from Cambridge University.

Later Life and Death:

Bose authored two illustrious books; ‘Response in the Living and Non-living’ (1902) and ‘The Nervous Mechanism of Plants’ (1926). He also extensively researched the behavior of radio waves. Mostly known as a plant physiologist, he was actually a physicist. Bose devised another instrument called ‘Coherer’, for detecting the radio waves.
Before his death in 1937, Bose set up the Bose Institute at Calcutta. He was elected the Fellow of the Royal Society in 1920 for his amazing contributions and achievements.

5 Fast Facts You Need to Know about Jagdish Chandra Bose:

He Was Born in 1858 & Became Interested in Science While Studying Under a Jesuit Priest at St. Xavier’s College in Calcutta
He Is Best Known for His Invention of the Crescograph, Which Shows Plants & Animals Have Similar Reactions to Stimuli
He Was Not Fond of Patents & Did Not Seek a Monetary Return for His Inventions
He Was Also a Writer & Was Known as the Father of Bengali Science Fiction
He Died in 1937 at the Age of 78 After Setting Up the Bose Institute in Calcutta

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