J. C. Bose Biography
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| Jagdish Chandra Bose |
Sir
Jagdish Chandra Bose was a renowned Indian scientist. He discovered that like
other living beings plants also throb (palpitate) with life. The whole world
got surprised to hear about this new discovery of Bose. He invented various
scientific instruments. He demonstrated that plants also live, drink, sleep and
breathe as other living beings do.
Jagdish
Chandra was born on 30th November, 1858 at Bikrampur of East Bengal (now
in Munshiganj district of Bangladesh). His father was Bhagawan Chandra
Bose and mother was Prabhavati Devi. His father was a doctor and a leader
of the Brahmo Samaj. After completing his early education Jagdish Chandra was
sent to Calcutta. He was admitted to Hare School in 1869. Then he joined St.
Xavier’s School. In 1875, he was admitted to St. Xavier’s College. He got the
bachelor’s degree from the University of Calcutta in 1879. He then went to
England for higher education. He received Natural Science Tripos from the
University of Cambridge and BSc. from the University of London in 1884.
Sir
Jagdish returned to India and started his career as a Professor of Physical
Science at Presidency College. He worked there from 1885 to 1915. He
established the Bose Research Institute in Calcutta in 1917. He was the
director of the institute until his death.
Bose
invented highly sensitive instruments for the detention of minute responses by
living organisms to external stimuli. With the help of those instruments, he
was enabled to anticipate the parallelism between animal and plant tissues. He
constructed automatic recorders that were capable of registering extremely
slight movements. The instruments produced some striking results. One of them
was plants’ feeling. He proved it experimenting with injured plants.
‘Cryocograph’ is another device invented by Bose. This device is still used to
measure the development of a plant.
Jagdish
Chandra is famous for his discovery of life in plants. He also made another
important discovery—the discovery of Wireless Telegraphy. At the same time
experiments on radio signals transmission were also conducted by an Italian
scientist, Marconi. ‘Long electric waves’ were used by Marconi while Bose used
‘short electric waves’. ‘Short waves’ came to be used in Television and Radar
etc. Bose’s experiments on the quasi-optical properties of very short radio
waves led him to make improvements on the coherer, an early form of radio
detector. He also conducted experiments on electric energy. With the help of
wires, one day he could create waves that made a telephone ring. The phone was
75 feet away.
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| Jagdish Chandra Bose |
In 1900,
International Science Congress was held in Paris. Bose was nominated to
represent India. He explained his scientific theories there. Scientists from
the whole world were present there. They were astonished at his amazing talent.
In 1917,
the University of Calcutta conferred DSc. on Bose. He was also honoured by the
British Government of India. They conferred on him the title of ‘Sir’. He was
elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1920.
Jagdish
Chandra wrote various books on science and about his experiments. Some of them
are (1) Response in the Living and Non-living,
1902; (2) The Physiology of Photosynthesis, 1924; (3) The Nervous Mechanism of
Plants, 1926; (4) Plant Autographs and Their Revelations, 1927 etc.
This
great scientist died on 23rd November, 1937 at Giridih (now in Jharkhand,
India).
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