PROFILE OF THE MONTH

Born: 1 Jan 1894 in Calcutta, India
Died: 4 Feb 1974 in Calcutta, India

Satyendra Nath Bose was born on New Year's day in 1894. He was the eldest son and the only son of his parents. Having done his initial schooling in a neighboring elementary school in Calcutta, Bose entered the Presidency College in 1909. He enrolled in science courses, and Jagdis Chandra Bose was his Physics teacher there. Meghnad Saha was Bose's contemporary at Presidency College. Saha another famous physicist, also founded the Institute of Nuclear Physics which has now been renamed Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics.

Bose took his B.Sc. examination in 1913 and his M.Sc examination in 1915. He stood first in both the examinations, the second place going to Meghnad Saha.

In 1916, Sir Asutosh Mookerjee appointed him as a lecturer in the University College. While teaching relativity to the students of Mathematics, he took the opportunity to translate Einstein's paper on general relativity. In 1921, Bose left Calcutta to become a Reader at the Dacca University. It was during this period that he wrote the famous paper on the statistics of photons. It was named Bose statistics after him and is now an integral part of physics. Dirac coined the term boson for particles obeying these statistics.

In 1921 Bose went to Paris on study leave to work in the laboratories of Mme Curie. Later he went to Berlin where he met Einstein. He returned to Dacca in 1926 and became Professor. Shortly before Independence, Bose returned to Calcutta to become the Khaira Professor of Physics, he post he kept till 1956. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1958, and the Government of India named him a National Professor the following year. The President of India awarded him the honor of Padma Vibhushan.

In his famous paper on the statistics of photons, Bose derived Planck's Law of Radiation by proposing different states for the photon. He also proposed that there is no conservation of the number of photons. Instead of statistical independence of particles, Bose put particles into cells and talked about statistical independence of cells. Einstein generalized it to the counting of states of atoms, and predicted the phenomena of Bose-Einstein condensation, which has now been experimentally confirmed. Einstein, who saw at once that Bose had removed a major objection against light quanta, enthusiastically endorsed his work. Bose also published on statistical mechanics leading to the Einstein-Bose statistics.

Bose passed away in 1974.