Biography of Jagdish Chandra Bose

History of JC Bose

In the 19th century, when people considered plants as non living ‘thing’, it was all because of Sir Jagdish Chandra Bose that we came to know that plants too have feelings. Biography of Jagdish Chandra Bose is very interesting. Sir Jagdish Chandra Bose was an eminent Indian scientist. He was the first to prove that plants too have life. He also invented wireless telegraphy a year before Marconi patented his invention.

Jagdish Chandra Bose was born on November 30, 1858 in Mymensingh (now in Bangladesh). His father Bhagabanchandra Bose was a Deputy Magistrate of Faridpur and also a respected leader of Brahmo Samaj. Jagdish Chandra Bose had his early education in Bengali, from village school. In 1869, Jagdish Chandra Bose was sent to Calcutta to learn English and was educated at St. Xavier's School and College. He received his bachelor’s degree in 1879. He then went to England to study medicine at London University, but gave it up because of his own ill health. He then studied Natural Science at Christchurch College, Cambridge and returned with a B.Sc. degree and Natural Science Tripos (a special course of study at Cambridge) in 1885.

Upon his return, he was offered lecturership at Presidency College. As a teacher, Jagdish Chandra Bose was very popular and triggered the interest of his students by making extensive use of scientific demonstrations. In 1894, he decided to devote himself to pure research. He converted a small enclosure adjoining a bathroom in the Presidency College into a laboratory. He carried out experiments involving refraction, diffraction and polarization. It would not be wrong to call him as the inventor of wireless telegraphy. He also did his original scientific work in Microwaves. According to history of He was able to generate extremely short waves and achieved considerable improvement in Hertz’s detector of electric waves. J. C. Bose designed a compact apparatus for generating electromagnetic waves and studying their quasi-optical properties such as refraction, polarization and double refraction.

In 1895, a year before Marconi patented this invention; Jagdish Chandra Bose had publicly demonstrated electromagnetic waves, using them to ring a bell remotely and to explode some gunpowder. He later switched from physics to the study of metals and then plants. He fabricated a highly sensitive ‘coherer’, a device that detects radio waves. He found that the sensitivity of the coherer decreased when it was used continuously for a long period and it regained its sensitivity when he gave the device some rest. Finding that a universal reaction brought together metals, plants and animals under a common law, he next proceeded to study of modifications in response, which occur under various conditions. He found that they are all (metals and living tissues) benumbed by cold, intoxicated by alcohol, wearied by excessive work, stupefied by anaesthetics, excited by electric currents, stung by physical blows and killed by poison - they all exhibit essentially the same phenomena of fatigue and depression, together with possibilities of recovery and of exaltation, yet also that of permanent irresponsiveness which is associated with death. They all are responsive or irresponsive under the same conditions and in the same manner. The investigations showed that, in the entire range of response phenomena (inclusive as that is of metals, plants and animals) there is no breach of continuity; that ‘the living response in all its diverse modifications is only a repetition of responses seen in the inorganic’ and that the phenomena of response ‘are determined, not by the play of an unknowable and arbitrary vital force, but by the working of laws that know no change, acting equally and uniformly throughout the organic and inorganic matter.’ (‘Response in the living and non living’, a book by Sir J. C. Bose)

Bose's research on response in living and non-living led to some significant findings. He showed that not only animals but vegetable tissues under different kinds of stimuli-mechanical, application of heat, electric shock, chemicals, drugs - produce similar electric responses. He also invented an instrument to record the pulse of plants to show experimentally that plants too have life.

As stated in Biography of Jagdish Chandra Bose he did invaluable work in science, his work was recognized in the country only when the Western world acknowledged its importance. He founded the Bose Institute at Calcutta, devoted mainly to the study of plants. Today, the Institute carries research in other fields too. Bose is highly regarded in the scientific community of the world not merely for his contributions, but also for the changes they brought to India and the western attitude towards Indian science.