129th birth anniversary of Satyendra Nath Bose: a look at the scientist’s contributions

Source: The post is based on the article “129th birth anniversary of Satyendra Nath Bose: a look at the scientist’s contributions” published in Indian Express on 3rd January 2023

What is the News?

The 129th birth anniversary of Satyendra Nath Bose was celebrated recently.

Who was Satyendra Nath Bose?

Satyendra Nath Bose was born on January 1, 1894. He was a mathematician and physicist specializing in theoretical physics. 

Contributions

Bose Einstein Statistics: At the age of 22, Bose was appointed lecturer at Calcutta University, along with astrophysicist Meghnad Saha. 

In 1921, he joined the then-Dacca University as Reader in Physics. It was here while teaching that he documented his findings in a report called Planck’s Law and the Hypothesis of Light Quanta. 

Even though his research was rejected by a journal, he decided to mail his paper to Albert Einstein.

Einstein recognised the significance of Bose’s theory and generalised it to a wider range of phenomena, and the theory came to be known as Bose-Einstein statistics.

X-ray crystallography laboratory: In 1927, Bose was appointed professor of physics and then Head of Department at Dhaka University in 1927. 

Here, Bose designed equipment for setting up an X-ray crystallography laboratory at the university, and wrote several papers on a range of subjects, such as ‘D2 Statistics’, and ‘Total Reflection of Electromagnetic Waves in the Ionosphere’.

In 1945, he left Dhaka to return to his alma mater, the University of Calcutta as the Khaira Professor of Physics. He retired from the University of Calcutta in 1956 and spent a year as the Vice Chancellor at the Viswa-Bharati University.

Headed many institutions: He served as president of many scientific institutions, which include the Indian Physical Society, the National Institute of Science, the Indian Science Congress and the Indian Statistical Institute.

He also acted as an advisor to the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research(CSIR) and later became a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Recognition of his contributions: Bose was awarded Padma Vibhushan, one of the highest civilian awards in the country, by the Indian government in 1954.