Jagdish Chandra Bose

ASTONISHING facts like, trees sleep at midnight and wake up at 8 a.m. and that liquor has an intoxicating effects on plants as it does in animals and human beings, are a few of the numerous discoveries made by Jagdish Chandra Bose.

Jagdish was born in a village called Bikrampur (earlier a part of India but now in Bangladesh). He was born on November 30, 1858. Since his childhood, he was inclined towards the study of plants and animals. He was fond of studying and observing germinating seeds, tadpoles and fishes in ponds. He began his education in a Bengali village school and later joined St. Xavier’s School in Calcutta.

In college, he studied physics, but he had a special inclination towards botany. After graduation, he went to England, where he joined a medical college. Soon, however, he left it to join Christ Church College, Cambridge, to master natural science. He was required to learn Latin in order to qualify. Jagdish had the quality of perfecting whatever he took up and all that interested him. He returned to India in 1882, after gaining a distinguished academic experience in England. He was appointed Professor of physics in Presidency College, Calcutta. As a professor, he found that Indians were paid one-third the salary paid to Britishers. He refused to accept his salary. He adopted satyagraha, and finally won the battle after three years. He suffered a financial setback all this while, but he did not give up. Finally, all Indians got full salaries.

Jagdish began his research work by setting up his own laboratory, and even made many instruments with his own hands. He worked on experiments in electricity, and discovered the possibility of transmitting electric telegraphic signals. In 1875, he gave its public demonstration in Calcutta. But, he did not pursue the commercial possibilities which an Italian scientist Guglielmo Marconi did a year later. Marconi even won the Nobel Prize, which Jagdish could have easily sought. Instead, Bose got involved in nature. He worked on the response of plants and animals to stimuli. He experimented with non-living things and recorded the reactions through a special instrument that he had made. He passed electricity through man and animals and recorded the shock felt. When he passed a similar current through zinc, a non-living substance, he recorded a similar graph. Thus, he came to the conclusion that living and non-living things respond to stimuli. The discovery of the response of the non-living became the basis for the development of radar. Bose also discovered that plants respond to a stimulus like electricity. He proved that injecting poison into plants kills them. He proved many facts about plants life, some of which are:-

— At sunset, the lotus closes its petals because the temperature drops.

— Plants grow every second by 1/50,000th of an inch.

— When a plant is pinched at one point, the shock spreads to all other parts and the plant bends down in fatigue.

Jagdish became world famous and was invited to give lectures and demonstrations in Europe and America. He studied the laboratories abroad and felt the need to establish equally good ones in India. When Bose returned in 1915, he put together all his savings and set up an Institute in Calcutta in 1917. He delivered lectures that captivated the attention of students.

Besides science and research work, Bose was also interested in literature and enjoyed the company and works of Rabindranath Tagore. Money never attracted Bose. With enthusiasm and dedication he worked towards giving mankind a better understanding of nature.