Sir Jagdish Chandra Bose(1858 – 1937)

Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose was born on 30 November, 1858 at Mymensingh, now in Bangladesh. 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.Bose invented the Crescograph an electrical instrument that could measure the growth of a plant. He worked as a physicist, biologist, botanist, archaeologist and was a writer. He is recognized as the inventor of the first wireless detection device and for his discovery of millimeter length electromagnetic waves. India, in 1958 issued a commemorative postage stamp in honor of the centennial of his birth. 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 radiowaves. Mostly known as a plant physiologist, he was actually a physicist. Bose devised another instrument called ‘Coherer’, for detecting the radiowaves. Prior to 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.

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