Dr. (Sir) Jagdish Chandra Basu was a famous scientist of India who had deep knowledge of physics, biology, botany and archaeology. He was the first scientist to work on the optics of radio and microwaves. He made many important discoveries in botany. He was the first scientist in India to obtain an American patent.
He is considered the father of radio science. He also wrote science fiction and is considered the father of Bengali science fiction. He made extraordinary progress in sending wireless signals and was the first to use semiconductors to capture radio messages, but instead of commercially profiting from his discoveries, he published them publicly so that other researchers could work on them. .
After this he made many discoveries in botany and biology. He invented a device called the crescograph and studied the response of plants to various stimuli. In this way he proved that there is a lot of similarity between the tissues of plants and animals. At the behest of friends, he only applied for a patent and got it.
Early life and education
Basu was born on 30 November 1858 in Memensingh (now Bangladesh) of Faridpur in Dhaka district of Bengal province of British India. His father Bhagwan Chandra Basu was active in the Brahmo Samaj and held the posts of Deputy Magistrate and Assistant Commissioner at Faridpur, Bardhaman and other places.
His family came from Rarikhal village, Bikrampur, which is in present-day Munshiganj district of Bangladesh. Till the age of eleven, he attended the Bengali school in the village itself. His father believed that one should learn his mother tongue well before learning English.
Addressing a conference held at Vikrampur in AD 1915, Basu said- 'Sending children to English schools at that time was considered a sign of status. In the Bengali school I was sent to, my father's Muslim attendant's son sat on my right and a fisherman's son sat on my left. These were my sports mates as well. I used to listen with ear to their stories of birds, animals and water creatures. Perhaps these stories aroused a deep interest in my mind to research the structure of nature.'
After schooling, he came to Calcutta and took admission in St. Xavier's School. Jagdish Chandra had great interest in biology. After graduating, at the age of 22, he went to London to study medical science, but due to ill health, he abandoned the idea of becoming a doctor and went to Christ College, Cambridge. Father Lafont, the eminent professor of physics, inspired Bose to study physics.
He returned home in AD 1885 and continued to teach in the Presidency College till AD 1915 as an assistant professor of physics. At that time Indian teachers were paid one third of the salary of English teachers. Jagdish Chandra Bose opposed this discrimination and worked without pay for three years, due to which his financial condition deteriorated and he got a lot of debt.
To repay this debt, he had to sell his ancestral land. In the fourth year Jagadish Chandra Bose won and he was given full salary. He was married to Abala, the daughter of a renowned advocate of Calcutta and of Brahmasamaji Durgamohan Das. Abala was the cousin of Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das.
Abala has always been a source of inspiration for her husband. Bose was a good teacher who used scientific demonstrations extensively to teach in the classroom. Bose's student Satendra Nath Bose later became a famous physicist.
Discovery of Radio
The British theoretical physicist James Clerk Maxwell had mathematically predicted the existence of electromagnetic waves of various wavelengths, but he died in AD 1879 before his prediction could be verified. British physicist Oliver Lodge Maxwell demonstrated the existence of waves in AD 1887-88 and transmitted them to stars.
The German physicist Heinrich Hertz demonstrated the existence of electromagnetic waves in free space by experiment in AD 1888. Lodge then continued Hertz's work and delivered a commemorative lecture in June 1894. After Hertz's death it was published in book form. Lodge's work caught the attention of scientists from various countries including Jagadish Chandra Bose.
A notable aspect of Bose's microwave research was that he brought the wavelength down to the wavelength level of about 5 millimeters. They understood the disadvantages of long wavelength light waves to study the properties of light.
In AD 1895, Jagdish Chandra Bose made a public demonstration of his invention in the presence of William Mackenzie, the Governor of Bengal, at the Town Hall of Calcutta. The waves from his radiator crossed three walls at a distance of 75 feet and reached the receiver, which fired the pistol and rang the bell. To do this experiment with his radiator, Bose designed the antenna of modern wireless telegraphy.
It was a circular metal saucer on top of a 20 ft tall pole which was attached to the radiator and a similar saucer was attached to the receiver. Now they started trying to send the message over a longer distance. Governor William McKenzie was greatly impressed by this research and he encouraged Bose to pursue his research.
His dissertations began to be published in the leading research journals of science, which surprised the whole scientific world.
Bose wrote a Bengali essay, 'Invisible Light' It is written in- 'Invisible light can easily pass through brick walls, buildings etc. Therefore, message can be transmitted through light even without wires.' Popov did a similar experiment in Russia.
Bose's ‘Polarization of Electric Rays by Double Refractive Crystals’ The first scientific paper on sedatives was sent to the Asiatic Society of Bengal in May 1895, within a year of Lodge's article. His second article was sent by Lord Rayleigh to the Royal Society of London in October 1895. In December 1895, in its thirty-sixth issue of the London magazine Electrician, Jagdish Chandra Bose's article 'New Electro-Polariscope' Published on.
'kohirer' a term coined by the lodge at that time was used for Hertz's wave receiver or detector. The electrician immediately contacted Bose 'Koheer' Commented on - 'If Professor Bose succeeds in perfecting his coherer and obtains a patent, we will soon be able to use a Bengali scientist's research alone in the Presidency College laboratory to establish a navigational shore lighting system. I will see a new revolution.'
Bose planned to improve his coherer but never thought of patenting it.
Location in Radio Development
Jagdish Chandra Bose did his experiments at a time when radio was developing as a communication medium. Bose's work on radio-microwave optics was not related to radio communication, but the improvements he made and the facts he wrote about it influenced other radio inventors.
In late AD 1894, Guglielmo Marconi was working on a radio system that was being designed specifically for wireless telegraphy. By the beginning of AD 1896, this system was transmitting radio signals over a distance greater than the range specified by physics.
Jagadish Chandra Bose was the first scientist to use semiconductor junctions to detect radio waves and discovered several microwave components in this method. After this, there was no research work on electromagnetic waves of millimeter length for the next 50 years. In AD 1897, Jagdish Chandra Bose demonstrated the research done on millimeter waves at the Royal Institution of London.
He used waveguides, horn antennas, di-electric lenses, various polarizers and semiconductors up to 60 GHz in his research. All these instruments are still kept in Bose Institute, Kolkata. A 1.3 mm multibeam receiver at the VI 12 meter telescope in Arizona is built on the principles of a research paper by Acharya Bose in 1897.
Sir Neville Mott received the Nobel Prize for research in solid state electronics in AD 1977. He commented on Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose saying that Bose was 60 years ahead of his time. It was Bose who predicted the existence of Ch type and Ch type semiconductors.
Research on Botanicals
Jagdish Chandra Bose proved that the communication of stimuli in plants occurs through electrical means and not through chemical means. He first studied the effect of microwaves on plant tissue. He also studied the effect of changing weather on plants.
He 'Chemical Inhibitors' The effect on plants and the effect of changing temperature on plants was also studied. By analyzing changes in cell membrane potential under different conditions, they came to the conclusion that plants are sensitive to 'pain and affection' can experience.
Study of metal fatigue and response of cells
Bose did a comparative study of fatigue response on different metals and plant tissues. He stimulated different metals by a mixture of electrical, mechanical, chemical and thermal methods and noted similarities in the reaction of cells and metals. Bose's experiments showed a blubsubuns fatigue reaction in simulated cells and metals.
In addition, they studied the specific cyclic fatigue and recovery response to different stimuli in living cells and metals. Acharya Bose made a graph of the changing electrical response of plants with changing electrical stimuli and also showed that when plants are given poison or anesthetic (sedation medicine), their response starts decreasing and later becomes zero. But this reaction was not observed when zinc metal was treated with oxalic acid.
Knighthood
In 1917 Jagdish Chandra Bose was 'Knight' (Gandpahij) and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society for Physics and Biology, London. Bose did all his research work in simple equipment and simple laboratory. So they wanted to build a good laboratory in India. Taking his idea into shape, 'Bose Institute' Established which is a famous center of the nation for scientific research at present.
Jagdish Chandra Basu's house (Acharya Bhavan) built in AD 1902 has now been converted into a museum. Jagdish Chandra Bose continued to do experiments and research in his private laboratory after retirement. His health deteriorated day by day due to hard work. In AD 1933 he became seriously ill. On the advice of doctors, he went to Giridih in Bihar for climate change but his health did not improve and he died on 23 November 1937.