Jagadish Chandra Bose

Born on 30 November 1858 in East Bengal, India (now Bangladesh), Jagadish Chandra Bose was a world-renowned physicist and biologist and a pioneer in radio communication and plant biophysics. Bose attended the University of Cambridge, earning his degree in 1884. He then returned to Calcutta, where he accepted a professorship at Presidency College. The first Indian professor of physics at the college, Bose experienced racial discrimination; he was paid less than the British professors and was frequently denied funding and laboratory space. Nevertheless, he performed cutting-edge research on electromagnetic radiation, and in 1895 he demonstrated for the first time the wireless transmission and reception of microwave signals—before Guglielmo Marconi’s more celebrated 1897 demonstration of wireless telegraphy across the UK’s Salisbury Plain. Unlike Marconi, however, Bose shunned commercialization and did not seek to patent his inventions, believing that ideas should be shared freely. By 1900 Bose had become interested in plant physiology and plants’ absorption of radiation, making him one of the world’s first biophysicists. To better study plant behavior and tissue, he invented the crescograph, an electrical instrument for measuring plant growth. In 1917 he founded and became director of the Bose Institute, modeled after the Royal Institution in London. He was knighted in 1917 and elected to fellowship in the Royal Society in 1920. Bose died a week shy of his 79th birthday in November 1937.

Date in History: 30 November 1858