Satyendra Nath Bose - Research Career

Research Career

Bose attended Hindu School in Calcutta, and later attended Presidency College, also in Calcutta, earning the highest marks at each institution while fellow student Meghnad Saha came second. He came in contact with teachers such as Jagadish Chandra Bose and Prafulla Chandra Ray who provided inspiration to aim high in life. From 1916 to 1921, he was a lecturer in the physics department of the University of Calcutta. Along with Saha, Bose prepared the first book in English based on German and French translations of original papers on Einstein's special and general relativity in 1919. In 1921, he joined as Reader of the department of Physics of the then recently founded University of Dhaka (now in Bangladesh) by the then Vice Chancellor of University of Calcutta Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee, himself a distinguished mathematician, a high court judge, and with strong interest in physics. Bose set up whole new departments, including laboratories, to teach advanced courses for M.Sc. and B.Sc. honors and taught thermodynamics as well as James Clerk Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism.

Satyendra Nath Bose, along with Saha, presented several papers in theoretical physics and pure mathematics from 1918 onwards. In 1924, while working as a Reader at the Physics Department of the University of Dhaka, Bose wrote a paper deriving Planck's quantum radiation law without any reference to classical physics by using a novel way of counting states with identical particles. This paper was seminal in creating the very important field of quantum statistics. Though not accepted at once for publication, he sent the article directly to Albert Einstein in Germany. Einstein, recognizing the importance of the paper, translated it into German himself and submitted it on Bose's behalf to the prestigious Zeitschrift für Physik. As a result of this recognition, Bose was able to work for two years in European X-ray and crystallography laboratories, during which he worked with Louis de Broglie, Marie Curie, and Einstein.

After his stay in Europe, Bose returned to Dhaka in 1926. He was made Head of the Department of Physics. He continued guiding and teaching at Dhaka University. Bose designed equipments himself for a X-ray crystallography laboratory. He set up laboratories and libraries to make the department a center of research in X-ray spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, magnetic properties of matter, optical spectroscopy, wireless, and unified field theories. He also published an equation of state for real gases with Meghnad Saha. He was also the Dean of the Faculty of Science at Dhaka University until 1945. When the partition of India became imminent, he returned to Calcutta to take up the prestigious Khaira Chair and taught at University of Calcutta until 1956. He insisted every student to design his own equipment using local materials and local technicians. He was made professor emeritus on his retirement. He then became Vice Chancellor of Visva-Bharati University in Shanti Niketan. He returned to the University of Calcutta to continue research in nuclear physics and complete earlier works in organic chemistry. In subsequent years, he worked in applied research such as extraction of helium in hot springs of Bakreshwar.

Apart from physics, he did some research in biotechnology and literature (Bengali, English). He made deep studies in chemistry, geology, zoology, anthropology, engineering and other sciences. Being a Bengali, he devoted a lot of time to promoting Bengali as a teaching language, translating scientific papers into it, and promoting the development of the region.