Stories and statistics of bose

In his excellent article “The Man Behind Bose Statistics,” Kameshwar Wali mentions that Albert Einstein proposed to Bose that he work on two problems: “first, whether the new statistics implied a novel type of interaction between light quanta; and second, how the statistics of light quanta and transition probabilities would look in the new quantum mechanics.”

Apparently, Bose did not make progress with either of the two questions, nor is there any evidence that Einstein considered them further. Bose had formulated an interaction between radiation and matter, ¹ which Einstein criticized because, according to Wali’s article, “the coefficient of absorption is independent of the density of the radiation.” It can be shown, without the need to appeal to the “new quantum theory,” that it is Einstein’s 1916 quantum theory for the interaction between matter and radiation ² that leads directly to Bose statistics. ³ Surprisingly, this deduction escaped the attention of Einstein, who otherwise would have discovered Bose statistics.