New Delhi: Polymath Jagadish Chandra Bose could see the future. He was a true pioneer of wireless technology. Decades before it became the backbone of modern communication, he demonstrated how to send and receive signals using very short radio waves. His work laid the foundation for today’s high-speed 5G internet nearly a century before it became reality.
“Bose was at least 60 years ahead of his time,” said Nobel Laureate Nevill Mott in 1977, referring to the Indian scientist’s prediction of the existence of special materials—semiconductors— that are now essential for building modern electronic devices like computers and smartphones. Bose also proposed that the sun emits electromagnetic waves, a theory that was confirmed decades later in 1944.
His exceptional abilities earned him recognition beyond British-ruled India. In the early 20th century, he became one of the first Indians, alongside mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, to be elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in London.
Although JC Bose was famously averse to patents, after much persuasion from his American friend Sara Chapman Bull, he applied for a US patent for his “detector of electrical disturbances”, and in 1904, became the first Asian to receive one.
Bose’s close friend Rabindranath Tagore, who had supported him financially, praised his genius.
“I have seen the light in my friend,” said the famous poet, painter, writer and playwright. “It is my pride that my intuition was true even before the proof came along.”
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The constant gardener
Bose’s curiosity extended far beyond the physical world of atoms and molecules. From a young age, his fascination with nature was kindled by stories of birds and animals shared by his friends at a village school in Bengal Presidency, where he was educated in his mother tongue.
As a keen observer and lover of all living things, Bose noticed the often-overlooked vitality in the plant world.
“All around us, the plants are communicating. We just don’t notice it,” Bose wrote.
Inspired by the touch-me-not plant, which quickly folds or sheds its leaves at the slightest touch, Bose became convinced that plants, like animals, are sentient beings, capable of feeling pain and affection. To investigate these reactions, he invented a device called the crescograph.
Using a leaf, a carrot, and a turnip from his garden, Bose conducted simple yet novel experiments to explore the secret lives of plants—an area of study that had received little attention before. His discoveries would forever change how plants were understood.
On 10 May 1901, the Central Hall of the Royal Society in London became the stage for one of Bose’s most astonishing demonstrations. A room full of eminent scientists watched as Bose set out to prove that plants, too, could ‘feel’.
For the experiment, Bose carefully placed a plant in a vessel filled with bromide solution, submerging its roots up to the stem. He then attached the crescograph to measure the plant’s movements.
As the solution took effect, the plant’s “pulse” was displayed on a screen as a spot that moved in a pendulum-like motion. As the plant ‘fought’ the poison, the vibrations became more intense, and the spot violently shook before coming to a stop. The demonstration left the audience in awe, though some sceptics dismissed Bose’s findings.
Undeterred, Bose continued his research, using the crescograph to study how plants respond to fertilisers, light, and even wireless waves. His experiments showed that plants grow faster when exposed to pleasant music, and slower in harsh conditions. These insights, viewed with cynicism back then, have only found broader scientific validation in recent decades.
This pattern of being ahead of his time was evident in much of Bose’s work. From wireless communication to plant intelligence, many of his bold predictions were validated only much later by scientists using more advanced instruments.
His work bridged the physical and biological sciences, leaving a legacy that continues to influence research today. Even during his lifetime, Bose’s achievements in botany and physics drew international attention. Austrian botanist Hans Molisch, for instance, travelled all the way to Calcutta to collaborate with Bose for six months during the winter of 1928-1929.
An inclusive ethos
Born in 1858 at Bengal Presidency’s Mymensingh (now in Bangladesh), Jagadish Chandra Bose completed his schooling in Dhaka and Kolkata. His childhood was steeped in the ideals of secularism, shaped by his close friendships with the son of his father’s Muslim attendant and a local fisherman’s son. At the Bengali school, where they all studied, these friendships taught him to embrace the ideals of equality and unity.
“When I returned home from school accompanied by my school fellows, my mother welcomed and fed all of us without discrimination. Although she was an orthodox old-fashioned lady, she never considered herself guilty of impiety by treating these ‘untouchables’ as her own children,” Bose said in 1915 at a conference in Bikrampur.
This formative environment instilled in Bose a rejection of social hierarchies. He said that because of these childhood friendships, he never saw anyone as belonging to a “lower caste” and did not see any divide between Hindus and Muslims.
His belief in the unity of all things—that everything is interconnected and ultimately converges into one—was evident in his scientific inventions, from the crescograph for measuring plants’ reactions, to the mercury coherer, a device for detecting radio waves.
This profound worldview also fostered a lasting bond with Rabindranath Tagore, who frequently expressed admiration for Bose’s vision.
“Bose was to be celebrated not just because he was helping recover the self-respect that colonial rule had injured and for leading India into Western science, but also because he was demonstrating that modern science merely reflected the wisdom of the Upanishads that ‘all is one’,” wrote Tagore in a Bengali magazine.
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Breaking down barriers
Bose’s groundbreaking work eventually earned him recognition, demonstrating in a sense that there was also an “Indian way of doing science”. But the road to praise and laurels wasn’t easy.
As an Indian scientist during the British Raj, Bose faced racism and prejudice. His research findings, presented in a style unfamiliar to the predominantly European scientific community, were initially dismissed as “emotional” and met with scepticism.
Despite these challenges, Bose persevered. Though he held a permanent position as a professor of physical science at Presidency College, where he served from 1895 to 1915, he conducted experiments in a cramped 12×12-foot room so small that he had to design new equipment just to carry them out.
When news of these working conditions reached Lord Kelvin—famed for developing the Kelvin Scale—he was appalled. In a letter to George Hamilton, then Secretary of State for India, Lord Kelvin wrote: “It would be to the credit of India and the scientific education in Calcutta if a well-equipped Physical Laboratory were added to the resources of the University of Calcutta, in connection with the Professorship held by Dr Bose.”
Following this, other noted scientists—including Lord Joseph Lister, president of the Royal Society—also co-signed a letter backing the Bengali polymath. However, this physical laboratory was set up only the year before his retirement.
Bose faced another hurdle: salary disparity between Indian and European academics. To protest against this, Bose refused to accept his paycheck for three years. In the end, his exceptional teaching and integrity convinced the administration to meet his demands, making him a permanent faculty member and paying him his full dues for the previous three years.
But he wanted to build a legacy of research in India. He quit his position as professor at the Presidency college in 1915, and, two years later, founded the Bose Institute to promote interdisciplinary research. He served as its director till his death on 23 November 1937.
For JC Bose, science was inseparable from a deeper spiritual philosophy and his fiercely Indian sensibilities.
“I am alive with the life force of the mother Earth, I have prospered with the help of the love of my countrymen,” wrote Bose in a letter to Tagore. “For ages, the sacrificial fire of India’s enlightenment has been kept burning, millions of Indians are protecting it with their lives, a small spark of which has reached this country through me.”
(Edited by Asavari Singh)
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