Acharjo Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose

[bujhee kom]

Sir Acharjo Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858-1937)




Who was this man? What did he do/achieve? And what does it mean to us?
His name came up in 4 of the BC "Forget Cricket" section threads. Many of us know him as a Bengali scientist of high international importance during the turn of century. We know him as a botanist maybe and some of us heard and read about him in our childhood as the scientist who first discovered and articulated the concept of plants having senses, i.e. responsive feelings! But he is much much more....This guy is much bigger than our centuries of collective imagination.

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.

...

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.
...

http://www.famousscientists.org/jagadish-chandra-bose/

Please read Varun Aggarwal from MIT on Scientist J.C. Bose, in his "SIR JAGADISH CHANDRA BOSE - The Unsung Hero of Radio Communication"
http://web.mit.edu/varun_ag/www/bose.html

This is how Aggarwal said about Sir S.C. Bose' achievement...

Achievements of Sir J. C. Bose in the field of communication

•Sir J. C. Bose invented the Mercury Coherer (together with the telephone receiver) used by Guglielmo Marconi to receive the radio signal in his first transatlantic radio communication over a distance of 2000 miles from Poldhu, UK to Newfoundland, St. Johns in December 1901. Guglielmo Marconi was celebrated worldwide for this achievement, but the fact that the receiver was invented by Bose was totally concealed. Read Bose's original paper on the receiver device.

•In 1895, Sir J. C. Bose gave his first public demonstration of electromagnetic waves, using them to ring a bell remotely and to explode some gunpowder. He sent an electromagnetic wave across 75 feet passing through walls and body of the Chairman, Lieutenant Governor of Bengal. (I am in process of ascertaining how this experiment is placed in context of works by other scientists towards demonstrating remote transmission of EM waves).

•Sir J. C. Bose holds the first patent worldwide to invent a solid-state diode detector to detect EM waves. The detector was built using a galena crystal. Have a look at Bose's patent (...).

•Sir J. C. Bose was a pioneer in the field of microwave devices. His contribution remains distinguished in the field and was acknowledged by the likes of Lord Kelvin, Lord Rayleigh, etc. Read what people thought about J. C. Bose. Refer to (...).

[bujhee kom]

Postage stamp from Bangladesh honoring Sir Acharjo J. C. Bose


Postage stamp from India honoring Sir Acharjo J. C. Bose

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Bose Crescograph

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Scientific Instruments - Jagadish Chandra Bose Museum - Bose Institute - Kolkata, India

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Images from Acharjo Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden, Howrah, India - Magnificent!

[Zunaid]

In 1998, IEEE recognized Bose as the pioneer in radio communication, preceding Marconi.

PS: he was also the first Bangali SciFi author. Perhaps the first Asian?

[bujhee kom]

Originally Posted by Zunaid
In 1998, IEEE recognized Bose as the pioneer in radio communication, preceding Marconi.

PS: he was also the first Bangali SciFi author. Perhaps the first Asian?

Thank you Dr. Kazi uncle on the first note...I was reading about IEEE now...

And yes!
"Niruddesher Kahini" ("The Story of the Missing One") (1896) and
"Palatak Toofan" ("Runaway Cyclone") (1921) are two that I knew of.

[bujhee kom]

Runaway Cyclone
By Jagadish Chandra Bose
Translated by Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay

http://www.strangehorizons.com/2013/.../3bose-f.shtml

...
Part II

I fell extremely ill some years ago. I was in bed for almost a month. The doctor said that a sea journey was absolutely necessary; without it I would not survive another spell of the illness. So I decided to journey to Ceylon.

The illness had taken its toll on my once abundant hair. One day my eight-year-old daughter came up to me and asked: "Daddy, what is an island?" Before I could answer she took hold of the few locks of hair left on my otherwise smooth head surface and said: "Here are the islands." After a while she said: "I have put a bottle of ‘Kuntal Keshari’ in your bag. Use it every day during your voyage; otherwise in the salty sea-water even these few islands would vanish."

The story of how "Kuntal Keshari" was invented is very interesting. A British Sahib came to India with his circus troupe. The star attraction of the circus was a lion with a huge and lustrous black mane. By a stroke of misfortune the lion lost its thick hair during the voyage to India because of a microbial disease. When the ship landed one could not see much difference between the lion and a hairless street dog. The helpless circus manager prostrated himself before a Sanyasi, touched his feet, and with folded hands asked for a solution. A Christian, and an Englishman at that! The Sanyasi was impressed with the man’s devotion and as blessing gave him a bottle of oil whose formulae had come to the Sanyasi in a dream. This is the same oil which later became famous as "Kuntal Keshari." By applying this oil the lion got its mane back within a week. For all bald men and their partners this oil holds a special fascination. This news was published for the public good in all the newspapers of the country. The leading monthly magazine even featured the news on its cover.

On 28 September I set sail on the Chusan. The first two days were uneventful and pleasant. On the 1st however the sea assumed a strange and hostile form and the sea-breeze stopped completely. Even the surface of the sea remained taut. We were all struck by the sad look on the Captain’s face. He told us that very soon an extremely violent cyclone would crash upon us. Being far from the coast, our future was now in God’s hands.

Soon thereafter the sky became overcast with thick black clouds. It became dark almost instantly and some strong winds from afar came and struck our ship several times. I have only a faint idea of what happened thereafter. All of a sudden it was as if the angry giants of yore had returned and come to destroy the earth. The sounds of the cyclone winds mixed with the sounds of the angry sea and made the music of destruction all around us. Waves upon waves hit our boat and rocked it from all sides. A huge wave took away our mast and life-boat with it. Our last day was upon us.
...

[Navo]

That short story was fantastic! Thanks for looking it up BK da

[Alchemist]

Thanks a lot Javed (BK) bhai for this thread. When I look for inspirations (specially when I'm down) from previous generations, Jagadish Chandra Bose and Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar from the Bengal renaissance period tops my list. Satyendra Nath Bose is another legend (a student of Jagadish Bose).

A few relatively less known facts about Jagadish Chandra Bose:

1. Although he's the best in radio frequency engineering at late 19th century in the world (he invented and demonstrated successful radio signal transmission before Marconi), Jagadish didn't think it as his best work. He actually believed that the work he did to identify plant nervous system was his best work (specially the ascent of sap and microwaves in plant tissues).
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18986...-h/18986-h.htm
Unfortunately, after his death, no one really carried it on. Recently, a scientist from Sydney (UNSW) wrote an article on him. More here: http://www.scienceandculture-isna.or...20Shepherd.pdf

2. Jagadish Chandra Bose and Rabindranath Thakur (Tagore) were very close friends and they inspired each other to perform their best. Here's an article on this topic.
http://rupkatha.com/jagadish-chandra...ranath-tagore/

Thanks to Project Gutenberg, Jagadish Bose's biography is here:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22085...-h/22085-h.htm

[simon]

I am curious to know why names like Thakur became Tagore & Boshu became Bose or Dotto became Dutt ?
Can anyone explain please why there is an English version of some bengali names ?

[Zunaid]

Colonial legacy. Many of the Bangali elites of that time Anglicized their names to make it easier for the masters to pronounce them and provide them their favors.

[Alchemist]

There is a Wikipedia article on anglicization. Seems like it happened everywhere in the world and not just Bengal (or Bangla).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglicisation

[simon]

thanks, that's both interesting & funny
only English could do that

[mufi_02]

I wonder what would be anglicized form of Chowdhury Jafrullah Sharafat? Chadwick Jefferey Sharon?

on topic, heard a lot about Jagadish Chandra Boshu while growing up. Regarding Sir title, did he receive that from then king/queen of England?

[Navo]

I think Chowdhury would become Cowdrey. They'd probably disregard his first two names and just call him Cowdrey

[Sohel]

No self-respecting person should accept Anglicization unless she or he's English. Then again, decolonizing the mind has always been the toughest task for us descendants of the colonial petit-bourgeoisie created to exploit, impoverish and oppress our own people. No wonder we so happily become "American", "British", "Australian" or what have you even after spending just a few years in Massah's backyard often built on oppression. No wonder we're so quick to minimize the importance of learning and knowing Bangla whilst taking so much pride in speaking unaccented English like our creators. Ever so eager to remain deliberately ignorant of who we are, so that we can be an anecdote in someone else's history. Always wanna be someone or something we're not, often without knowing just what it is we're running away from. That's self loathing. Some make utterly unsubstantiated claims of foreign ancestry for this reason. Some even choose to breed the Bangali out of ourselves altogether. A Coconut is what a Coconut does.

Anyway, Anglicization is better in someways than intentionally goofy translations of names to make them sound dumb, and rob them of their etymological and philosophical depth in the process. Happened a lot in US with Native American names.

[Zeeshan]

Chadwick? really dude?....