Down to His Science

Kunal Ghosh’s biography of J.C. Bose highlights the scientist’s rigour, patriotism and uprightness

Generations of Indians have grown up hearing the name of Jagadish Chandra Bose. While we have known he was famous in the West, there are only brief references in textbooks and newspapers that tell us that it was he and not Guglielmo Marconi who invented radio communication. The name of the Bengali scientist again popped up at the turn of the century as the world celebrated the 100th anniversary of the invention of wireless communication. Researchers were surprised to see that Bose held the first American patent on this technology, long before Marconi had used that and other inventions to communicate across distances.

Unsung Genius: A Life of Jagadish Chandra Bose is a hefty volume, chronicling in minute detail the experiments and life of this reclusive scientist of the 19th century. Kunal Ghosh, a former professor of aerospace engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, pored over hundreds of documents to write this exhaustive biography of Bose as a physicist and, later, a plant physiologist. With diagrams, photographs and formulae, he explains the experiments in radio communication to build a case for why Bose, not Marconi, should have been given the Nobel Prize.

Though Bose studied in the West, he developed a burning desire to re-establish India as an important centre of learning

Bose was born in 1858 to an affluent family that lived by Brahmo Samaj principles and rejected idol worship. He was passionate about science and nature from a very young age, soon becoming an expert horse rider and a crack shot. His early years as a teacher were difficult, as he battled blatant racism from British colonialists, who constantly put stumbling blocks in his research. But Bose ignored them, even fighting for his rights by refusing to accept a lower salary for years.

As a teacher, Bose showed his students and the public numerous experiments to elucidate the principles of science. His increasing popularity only irritated the British.

Throughout his trying times, Bose found numerous sources of unexpected support, guidance and inspiration from such persons as Rabindranath Tagore, Swami Vivekananda and two of the Swami’s disciples. That association also instilled in him a deep sense of patriotism and a burning desire to re-establish India as an important centre of learning in the world. Bose did not care about worldly recognition or money. He repeatedly refused to patent his inventions and earn a fortune selling them. That, ultimately, would work against him in the theft of his notebook containing detailed instructions and drawings for inventions that Marconi would use, but claim as a product of his own research.

Just when Bose had made stunning discoveries in physics, he plunged wholeheartedly into applying them to an entirely different field—plant physiology. He invented numerous instruments to monitor electrical activity in plants and their sensitivity to touch, manure, chemicals or drugs. Ghosh plunges into great detail not only about the influence of Vivekananda and Tagore, but also into the mechanics of radio waves and plant physiology.

Skip a chapter or two, if you like—this is still a story worth telling about one of India’s most remarkable scientists.