GENESIS

J C Bose Science Heritage Museum (JCBSHM), founded by Sir J C Bose Trust at Acharya Bhaban, in collaboration with Cambridge University Press (CUP) has initiated a year-long programme of academic discussions on wide-ranging topics in science and technology. The genesis of the programme and the philosophy behind it are as follows. J C Bose made outstanding contributions in the areas of radio and microwave research. In later years, he took up experimental studies on plants. His research approach was that of a physicist. He designed and constructed instruments which bear the stamp of his scientific ingenuity, he made quantitative measurements using the instruments and searched for universal principles in the similarity of responses of plants and animals and the living and the non-living to various stimuli. Based on a large number of experimental observations, Bose developed bold new theories on signaling processes in plants and the ability of plants to learn, compute and remember. The traditional lndian message of cosmic unity of all existence permeated Bose’s discovery of the basic unity in all forms of life and the similarity between the living and the non-living, long before quantum physics and cosmology could perceive the presence of primary sources in natural phenomena.

Bose played a pioneering role in initiating interdisciplinary research in India. In this he was several decades ahead of his time. It is only in the twenty-first century that interdisciplinary research has undergone an unprecedented expansion in its scope, content and activity. The subject of systems biology has brought about a convergence of disciplines like physics, chemistry, mathematics, computer science and engineering in addressing interesting problems in biology. The new disciplines of Econophysics and Sociophysics utilize the concepts and techniques of statistical physics in the investigation of economic and social systems. Recent studies by experimental biologists employ standard information theoretic measures like mutual information to characterize signal transduction in the living cell. In a Perspective article titled “Life, logic and information”, the noted cell biologist Paul Nurse, a Nobel Laureate, stresses on the need for interdisciplinary collaboration between information theorists, physicists, chemists, mathematicians and experimental biologists in investigating and characterizing information flow in living systems. Machine learning techniques, integral to artificial intelligence studies, and quantum information theoretic measures like entanglement spectrum have recently found their use in the identification and classification of phase transitions in many-body condensed matter systems. The few examples mentioned highlight the richness and vitality of present-day interdisciplinary research.

In the planning of the JCBSHM, the guiding principle is that the museum should be a dynamic entity and not solely confined to the past. The appropriate way of preserving J C Bose’s legacy would be to hold regular scientific discourses from an interdisciplinary perspective. The idea is to bring scientists from different disciplines together for stimulating intellectual interactions resulting in cross-disciplinary research initiatives. The first meeting of the year-long programme took place on May 18, 2017 with the theme “Classical and Quantum Computation and Information”. Prof. Sanghamitra Bandyopahyay, the Director, Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) inaugurated the year-long programme and gave the Chairperson’s address on the theme of the meeting. The other speakers were Prof. D. P. Mukherjee, Prof. Guruprasad Kar and Prof. Goutam Paul of ISI. The speakers described the progress achieved in the areas of classical and quantum computation and information in terms of new concepts, techniques and algorithms. The discourse was followed by the Book Launch programme in which the book “Quantum Spin Glasses, Annealing and Computations” by Prof. Bikas K. Chakrabarti et al., published by CUP, was released. Prof. Chakrabarti explained the principle of quantum annealing based computation and the paradigm shift it has brought about in quantum computation. In the year-long programme, interdisciplinary scientific discourses will be held every month, to which scientists and researchers from in and around Kolkata will be invited. The main motivation beyond the year-long academic programme is to foster J C Bose’s spirit of science across disciplines. We hope that the partnership between JCBSHM and CUP yields rich dividends in terms of new research and book initiatives in the year ahead.