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Padma Vibhushan Satyendra Nath Bose সত্যেন্দ্র নাথ বসু FRS
Satyendra Nath Bose in 1925
Born	(1894-01-01)1 January 1894 Calcutta, Dominion of India (Bengal Presidency)
Died	4 February 1974(1974-02-04) (aged 80) Calcutta, India
Nationality	Bengali
Alma mater	University of Calcutta Hindu School
Known for	Bose–Einstein condensate Bose–Einstein statistics Bose–Einstein distribution Bose–Einstein correlations Bose gas Boson Ideal Bose equation of state Photon gas
Spouse	Ushabati Bose (née Ghosh )
Awards	Padma Vibhushan Fellow of the Royal Society
Scientific career
Fields	Physics and Mathematics
Institutions	University of Dhaka and University of Calcutta

Satyendra Nath Bose, FRS (Template:Lang-bn Shottendronath Boshū, IPA: [ʃot̪ːend̪ronat̪ʰ boʃu]; 1 January 1894 – 4 February 1974) was a Bengali-Indian physicist specialising in mathematical physics. He is best known for his work on quantum mechanics in the early 1920s, providing the foundation for Bose–Einstein statistics and the theory of the Bose–Einstein condensate. A Fellow of the Royal Society, he was awarded India's second highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan in 1954 by the Government of India.

The class of particles that obey Bose–Einstein statistics, bosons, was named after Bose by Paul Dirac.

A self-taught scholar and a polyglot, he had a wide range of interests in varied fields including physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, mineralogy, philosophy, arts, literature, and music.

Early life and Education

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Bose was born in Calcutta (now Kolkata), India, the eldest of seven children. He was the only son, with six sisters after him. His ancestral home was in village Bara Jagulia, in the district of Nadia, in the state of West Bengal. His father, Surendranath Bose, worked in the Engineering Department of the East Indian Railway Company. Satyendra Nath Bose married Ushabati Ghosh at the age of 20. They had nine children. Two of them died in their early childhood.

His schooling began at the age of five, near his home. When his family moved to Goabagan, he was admitted to the New Indian School. In the final year of school, he was admitted to the Hindu School. He passed his entrance examination (matriculation) in 1909 and stood fifth in the order of merit. He next joined the intermediate science course at the Presidency College, Calcutta, where he was taught by illustrious teachers such as Jagadish Chandra Bose, Sarada Prasanna Das, and Prafulla Chandra Ray.

Naman Sharma and Meghnad Saha, from Dacca ("Dhaka"), joined the same college two years later. Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis and Sisir Kumar Mitra were few years senior to Bose. Satyendra Nath Bose chose mixed (applied) mathematics for his BSc and passed the examinations standing first in 1913 and again stood first in the MSc mixed mathematics exam in 1915. It is said that his marks in the MSc examination created a new record in the annals of the University of Calcutta, which is yet to be surpassed. After completing his MSc, Bose continued his tenure at the University of Calcutta as a research scholar in 1916 and explored Einstein's theory of relativity.

Apart from physics, he did some research in biotechnology and literature (Bengali and English). He made deep studies in chemistry, geology, zoology, anthropology, engineering and other sciences. Being Bengali, he devoted a lot of time to promoting Bengali as a teaching language, translating scientific papers into it, and promoting the development of the region.

As a polyglot, he was well versed in several languages such as Bengali, English, French, German and Sanskrit as well as the poetry of Lord Tennyson, Rabindranath Tagore and Kalidasa. He could also play the esraj, a musical instrument similar to a violin. He was actively involved in running night schools that came to be known as the Working Men's Institute.

Research career & Bose-Einstein Statistics

In 1921, Bose joined as Reader in the Department of Physics of the recently founded University of Dhaka (in "present-day" Bangladesh). Here, Bose prepared the first book in English based on German and French translations of original papers on Einstein's special and general relativity in 1919. He set up (verification needed) whole new departments, including laboratories, to teach advanced courses for MSc and BSc honours and taught thermodynamics as well as James Clerk Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism.

While presenting a lecture at Dhaka University on the theory of radiation and the ultraviolet catastrophe, Bose intended to show that the contemporary theory was inadequate, because it predicted results not in accordance with experimental results.

In the process of describing this discrepancy to his students at Dhaka University, Bose for the first time took the position that the Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution would not be true for microscopic particles, where fluctuations due to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle will be significant. Thus he stressed the probability of finding particles in the phase space, each state having volume h, and discarding the distinct position and momentum of the particles.

Bose subsequently wrote a scientific paper deriving Planck's quantum radiation law without any reference to classical physics by using a novel way of counting states with identical particles. Although the paper was seminal in creating the very important field of quantum statistics, it was not approved for instant publication, wherefore Bose sent it to Albert Einstein in Germany.

Bose's paper titled "Planck's Law and the Hypothesis of Light Quanta" was sent with the the following letter from Dhaka:

Respected Sir, I have ventured to send you the accompanying article for your perusal and opinion. I am anxious to know what you think of it. You will see that I have tried to deduce the coefficient 8π ν/c in Planck's Law independent of classical electrodynamics, only assuming that the ultimate elementary region in the phase-space has the content h. I do not know sufficient German to translate the paper. If you think the paper worth publication I shall be grateful if you arrange for its publication in Zeitschrift für Physik. Though a complete stranger to you, I do not feel any hesitation in making such a request. Because we are all your pupils though profiting only by your teachings through your writings. I do not know whether you still remember that somebody from Calcutta asked your permission to translate your papers on Relativity in English. You acceded to the request. The book has since been published. I was the one who translated your paper on Generalised Relativity.

Einstein translated Bose's paper "Planck's Law and Hypothesis of Light Quanta" into German, and had it published in Zeitschrift für Physik under Bose's name, in 1924 (3 years after Bose joined Dhaka University).

Since then, Bose was able to work for two years in European X-ray and crystallography laboratories, during which he worked with Louis de Broglie, Marie Curie, and Einstein.

After his stay in Europe, Bose returned to Dhaka University in 1926. He did not have a doctorate, wherefore under prevailing regulations, he was not qualified for the post of Professor he applied, but Einstein may have given a reference to the University for Bose. Subsequently, Bose was made Head of the Department of Physics. He continued guiding and teaching here and also published an equation of state for real gases with Meghnad Saha, and was the Dean of the Faculty of Science at the University of Dhaka until 1945.

When the partition of India became imminent, he returned to Calcutta and taught there until 1956. He insisted every student to design his own equipment using local materials and local technicians. He was made professor emeritus on his retirement. He then became Vice-Chancellor of Visva-Bharati University in Shanti Niketan. He returned to the University of Calcutta to continue research in nuclear physics and complete earlier works in organic chemistry. In subsequent years, he worked in applied research such as extraction of helium in hot springs of Bakreshwar.

There are three outcomes. What is the probability of producing two heads?

Since the coins are distinct, there are two outcomes which produce a head and a tail. The probability of two heads is one-quarter.

The reason Bose's interpretation produced accurate results was that since photons are indistinguishable from each other, one cannot treat any two photons having equal energy as being two distinct identifiable photons. By analogy, if in an alternate universe coins were to behave like photons and other bosons, the probability of producing two heads would indeed be one-third (tail-head = head-tail). Bose's interpretation is now called Bose–Einstein statistics. This result derived by Bose laid the foundation of quantum statistics, as acknowledged by Einstein and Dirac. When Einstein met Bose face-to-face, he asked him whether he had been aware that he had invented a new type of statistics, and he very candidly said that no, he wasn't that familiar with Boltzmann's statistics and didn't realize that he was doing the calculations differently. He was equally candid with anyone who asked. Einstein also did not at first realize how radical Bose's departure was, and in his first paper after Bose he was guided, like Bose, by the fact that the new method gave the right answer. But after Einstein's second paper using Bose's method in which he predicted the Bose–Einstein condensate, he started to realize just how radical it was, and he compared it to wave/particle duality, saying that some particles didn't behave exactly like particles.

Bose had already submitted his article to the British Journal Philosophical Magazine, which rejected it, before he sent it to Einstein. We don't know why it was rejected.

Einstein extended this idea to atoms. This led to the prediction of the existence of phenomena which became known as Bose–Einstein condensate, a dense collection of bosons (which are particles with integer spin, named after Bose), which was demonstrated to exist by experiment in 1995.

Although several Nobel Prizes were awarded for research related to the concepts of the boson, Bose–Einstein statistics and Bose–Einstein condensate, Bose himself was not awarded a Nobel Prize.

In his book The Scientific Edge, physicist Jayant Narlikar observed:

SN Bose's work on particle statistics (c. 1922), which clarified the behaviour of photons (the particles of light in an enclosure) and opened the door to new ideas on statistics of Microsystems that obey the rules of quantum theory, was one of the top ten achievements of 20th century Indian science and could be considered in the Nobel Prize class.

When Bose himself was once asked that question, he simply replied, “I have got all the recognition I deserve”— probably because in the realms of science to which he belonged, what is important is not a Nobel, but whether one’s name will live on in scientific discussions in the decades to come.

Honours

In 1937, Rabindranath Tagore dedicated his only book on science, Visva–Parichay, to the plant physiologist, Jagadish Chandra Bose, Satyendra Nath Bose's teacher. Bose was honoured with title Padma Vibhushan by the Indian Government in 1954. In 1959, he was appointed as the National Professor, the highest honour in the country for a scholar, a position he held for 15 years. In 1986, the S.N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences was established by an act of Parliament, Government of India, in Salt Lake, Calcutta.

Bose became an adviser to then newly formed Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. He was the President of Indian Physical Society and the National Institute of Science. He was elected General President of the Indian Science Congress. He was the Vice-President and then the President of Indian Statistical Institute. In 1958, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was nominated as member of Rajya Sabha.

Partha Ghose has stated that

Bose's work stood at the transition between the 'old quantum theory' of Planck, Bohr and Einstein and the new quantum mechanics of Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Born, Dirac and others.

Death

Bose died in 1974, he left behind his wife, two sons, and five daughters.

References

1. ^ Mehra, J. (1975). "Satyendra Nath Bose 1 January 1894 – 4 February 1974". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 21: 116–126. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1975.0002.
2. ^ "S.N. Bose Biography Project". July 2012.
3. Wali 2009, pp. xv, xxxiv.
4. ^ Barran, Michel, "Bose, Satyendranath (1894–1974)", Science world (biography), Wolfram.
5. ^ Cite error: The named reference SMahanti was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
6. Farmelo, Graham, "The Strangest Man", Notes on Dirac's lecture Developments in Atomic Theory at Le Palais de la Découverte, 6 December 1945, UKNATARCHI Dirac Papers, p. 331, note 64, BW83/2/257889.
7. Sean Miller (18 March 2013). Strung Together: The Cultural Currency of String Theory as a Scientific Imaginary. University of Michigan Press. p. 63. ISBN 978-0-472-11866-3.
8. Wali 2009, p. xvii.
9. ^ Kamble, Dr VB (January 2002). "Vigyan Prasar".
10. ^ O'Connor, JJ; Robertson, EF (October 2003). "Satyendranath Bose". The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive. UK: St Andrew's.
11. Wali 2009, pp. xxiv, xxxix.
12. Wali 2009, p. xvi.
13. Wali 2009, pp. xvii, xviii, xx.
14. Shanbhag, MR. "Satyendra Nath Bose (January 1, 1894 – February 4, 1974)". Indian Statistical Institute.
15. Venkataraman, G (1992), Bose And His Statistics, Universities Press, p. 14, ISBN 978-81-7371-036-0
16. ^ Wali 2009, p. 414.
17. ^ Shanbhag, MR. "Scientist". Personalities. Calcutta web.
18. Wali 2009, pp. xx–xxiii.
19. Wali 2009, pp. xxx, xxiv.
20. Wali 2009, pp. xxxvi, xxxviii.
21. A.Douglas Stone, Chapter 24, The Indian Comet, in the book Einstein and the Quantum, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 2013.
22. "Quantum Physics; Bose Einstein condensate", Image Gallery, NIST, 11 March 2006.
23. Narlikar, Jayant V (2003), The Scientific Edge: The Indian Scientist from Vedic to Modern Times, Penguin Books, p. 127, ISBN 978-0-14-303028-7. The work of other 20th century Indian scientists which Narlikar considered to be of Nobel Prize class were Srinivasa Ramanujan, Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman and Megh Nad Saha.
24. Alikhan, Anvar (16 July 2012). "The Spark in a Crowded Field". Outlook India. Retrieved 10 July 2012.
25. Wali 2009, pp. xxxiv, xxxviii.
26. Ghose, Partha (3 January 2012), "Original vision", The Telegraph, IN.

External links

• Bose, Satyendra Nath (1924), "Plancks Gesetz und Lichtquantenhypothese", Zeitschrift für Physik (in German), 26: 178–181, Bibcode:1924ZPhy...26..178B, doi:10.1007/BF01327326 on Planck's law.
• Pais, Abraham (1982), Subtle is the Lord...: The Science and Life of Albert Einstein, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 423–34, ISBN 0-19-853907-X.
• Saha; Srivasthava, Heat and thermodynamics.
• Pitaevskii, Lev; Stringari, Sandro (2003), Bose–Einstein Condensation, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

• Wali, Kameshwar C (2009), Satyendra Nath Bose: his life and times (selected works with commentary), Singapore: World Scientific, ISBN 981-279-070-5
• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Satyendra Nath Bose", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews
• "Bosons – The Birds That Flock and Sing Together", Vigyan prasar, IN: The government, January 2002 (biography of Bose and Bose–Einstein Condensation).
• S.N. Bose Scholars Program, Wisc.
• The Quantum Indians: film on Bose, Raman and Saha on YouTube by Raja Choudhury and produced by PSBT and Indian Public Diplomacy.

Template:Persondata

• 1894 births
• 1974 deaths
• Hindu School, Kolkata alumni
• Presidency University, Kolkata alumni
• Bengali mathematicians
• Bengali physicists
• University of Dhaka faculty
• Fellows of the Royal Society
• Fellows of the Indian National Science Academy
• Indian physicists
• Indian mathematicians
• 20th-century mathematicians
• Thermodynamicists
• University of Calcutta alumni
• University of Calcutta faculty
• Emeritus Professors in India
• Recipients of the Padma Vibhushan
• People associated with Santiniketan
• Articles needing translation from foreign-language Wikipedias
• Nominated members of the Rajya Sabha