News , Events and Announcements

Sir Jagadish Chunder Bose’s recently discovered two British Patents on solid state detectors will be handed over to Acharya Bhaban Science Heritage Museum, for preservation and display, in a short ceremony on Tuesday, March 28, 2017 at 11:00 AM. by Dr. Probir K. Bondyopadhyay, Internationally known Forensic Historian of Science and Technology, based in Houston, Texas, U.S.A.

(22 November 2013)

I am delighted to address the participants at the function of installation of the Bose Institute Creation Document at the Acharya Bhavan, Kolkata. My special greetings to Dr Probir Bondyopadhyay, the Chief Executive of Miss Margaret Elizabeth Noble (Sister Nivedita) Memorial Fund and the Sir J C Bose Trust, Kolkata who have pioneered the historical event. Also I greet the science students, research scholars of the Bose institute participating in this programme. I am sorry, I am unable to participate in the programme personally. My personal apologies.

The initiative of the Memorial Fund is indeed a remarkable one and it is the greatest tribute we can pay to Acharya Sir J C Bose. Acharya Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose was a true scientific mind transcending individual disciplines like physics, biology, or botany. His observations on archaeology were profound. He was also one amongst world’s early writers of science fiction. Lived during the golden years of Indian history along with great personalities like Swami Vivekananda, JRD Tata, Bala Gandadhar Tilak and Rabindranath Tagore, Acharya Bose pioneered the investigation of radio and microwave optics, made very significant contributions to plant science, and laid the foundations of experimental science in this part of the world. He made remarkable progress in his research of remote wireless signalling and was the first to use semiconductor junctions to detect radio signals. Sir Nevill Mott, Nobel Laureate in 1977 for his own contributions to solid-state electronics acknowledged that Acharya Bose was at least 60 years ahead of his time in anticipating the existence of P-type and N-type semiconductors. Acharya Bose subsequently made a number of pioneering discoveries in plant physiology and established the existence of plants as living beings.

Interdependence and enrichment

When I think of Acharya JC Bose, I recall the historic speech delivered by Acharya as the President of Indian Science Congress, during the 1927 at Lahore on the topic “The Unity of Life”. There he mentions which I quote, “the whole world is interdependent and a constant stream of thought has throughout ages enriched the common heritage of mankind. It is the realization of this mutual dependence that has kept the mighty human fabric bound together and ensured the continuity and permanence of civilizations”. Dear young friends, please remember this is the statement given by one of the great scientist of our country, 85 years back. Science was always borderless and will continue to be borderless. Friends, when you work in science, science will explore space systems, interplanetary flights, human genetic structures and also prevention of diseases using bio-science through immunology and vaccinology and above all science will transform the lives of billion people of the nation. Already the world is connected and it will be further improved towards multimedia connectivity through the introduction of newer technologies such as 3G, Wi-Fi and Wi-MAX. We have to work together to maintain this inter-dependence for working towards an economically developed, happy, peaceful and safe planet earth through the application of science and technology.

Power of the will and characteristics of scientists

What we see in JC Bose life? All his varied scientific work has been made possible, because of his sheer will power to excel in science. I would like to quote from him. “The external stimulus is not so overwhelmingly dominant and man is no longer a passive agent in the hand of destiny. He has a latent power which will raise him above the terrors of inimical surroundings; it rests with him whether the channel through which the outside world reaches him at his command be widened or closed”. This is an important message for all scientists young and experienced, so that they can realize their best through the use of their will power.

His life brings out the characteristics to be possessed by aspiring scientists. They are: keen power of observation, experimentation and unique thinking; trait of perseverance; making books to be close friends; always have a dream and be eager to discover new knowledge.

Genius is akin to light; it ought to be contained in to a space order to illuminate the surroundings. A dedicated disciple of Swami Vivekananda, Sara Chapman Thorp Bull, provided $20,000 endowment to Acharya Bose to set up his own botanical research laboratory. Another Disciple of Swami Vivekananda Miss Margaret Elizabeth Noble later known as Sister Nivedita took active interest on Acharya Bose's scientific activities. Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore composed a song to laud Acharya’s work. It is through the dedicated efforts of people like Acharya Bose that proved to the world that the Indian intellect is second to none. Acharya Bose proved by the performance of his multi-disciplinary research task beyond the power of any of his contemporary scientists, and seizing of a great place in the intellectual advance of the world. What a great celebration of human excellence!

Everyone leaves something behind when they leave this world. Many leave behind their children, or a house or a wall built or a tree planted. Some people leave behind a book or a painting. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you leave this material existence and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you are there. It does not matter what you do, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just mows lawns and a real gardener is in the touching. The lawn-mower might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime. Acharya Bose was one such gardener of the Indian creative soil. The choices Acharya Bose made about the work he did indeed provided the soil on which countless flowers of scientific and creative minds blossomed. On the occasion of this great historic event at Acharya Bose Museum of adding memorabilia combing from blessed souls of Sister Nivedita and Gurudev Tagore, I congratulate Dr Probir Bondyopadhyay and Dr Parul Chakraborty to painstakingly working to preserve the great legacy of Acharya Bose.

Once again I greet all of you on this historical occasion. May God bless you.

- A.P.J.Abdul Kalam

GENESIS

Acharya Bhaban Science Heritage Gallery & Research center (ABSHGRC), 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 ABSHGRC, 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 ABSHGRC and CUP yields rich dividends in terms of new research and book initiatives in the year ahead.