User:Aamri2/Satyendra Nath Bose
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Satyendra Nath Bose | |
|---|---|
 Satyendra Nath Bose at Dhaka University (Falguni Sarkar/The S.N. Bose Project, 1930s). | |
| Born | January 1, 1894 Calcutta, India |
| Died | February 4, 1974 (aged 80) Calcutta, India |
| Nationality | Indian |
| Occupation(s) | Mathematician and physicist |
| Notable work | Planck's Law and the Hypothesis of Light Quanta |
Satyendra Nath Bose (1 January 1894 – 4 February 1974) was an Indian mathematician and physicist. He developed Bose-Einstein statistics in collaboration with Albert Einstein.
Notable Works
[edit]After being dissatisfied with Planck's process in describing light quanta, perceiving an inconsistency in his treatment of light as both a particle and a wave, he set out to describe a way to count the particles in a so-called "gas" of light while still following Planck's law. He wrote his findings in Planck's Law and the Hypothesis of Light Quanta, a manuscript that Einstein then further applied to count atoms in an ordinary gas, thus formulating Bose-Einstein statistics and discovering the Bose-Einstein condensate. Particles that can be described using Bose-Einstein statistics are named "bosons" after Bose and control forces, contrasting with fermions, which are instead described with Fermi-Dirac statistics and make up matter.
History
[edit]Bose graduated from the University of Calcutta and began teaching at the University of Dhaka in 1921. He had already published papers describing the differing behaviour of matter in different conditions with Meghnad Saha, his friend and colleague. After considering the work of Max Planck, who had won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1981, Bose wrote Planck's Law and the Hypothesis of Light Quanta, which was rejected by the journal Philosophical Magazine in London.
Undeterred by the rejection, he sent the manuscript to Einstein in 1924, asking him to have the work published in Zeitschrift fur Physik if he finds it worth publication. Einstein not only found it worth publication, but called for Bose to take a two-year leave from his university to head to Europe to conduct research, sending him a handwritten postcard to ease the process. After showing them the postcard, the university gave him two years leave with a generous stipend, and the German Consulate granted him a visa without a fee.
He worked with renowned figures such as Maurice de Broglie and Marie Curie in Paris, but didn't meet Einstein himself until late 1925 in Berlin. Upon their meeting, Einstein challenged Bose to go further with the theory and work out the details.
In 1926, Bose returned to Dhaka and earned his professorship in physics. He continued to make contributions to the field, including work on unified field theories, while exploring a variety of other subject areas. He described himself as "not really in science anymore," saying he was "like a comet, a comet which came once and never returned again."
Lack of Recognition
[edit]Thanks to Einstein's influence and mentornship, Bose did not fall into obscurity in the same way many other Indian scientists have, even having two well-known concepts, Bose-Einstein statistics and the boson, named after him. However, during his entire time working in Europe, others described him as "terribly intimidated by Europeans," pointing to the British rule in India leading to feelings of inferiority. I would not be surprised if most people did not know Bose to be an Indian scientist, likely assuming him to be European as well. I think that giving him a bit of a greater focus in the Ontario curriculum would serve well to remind people of the global nature of scientific contributions, and his contributions were very influential and relevant to quantum mechanics.
References
[edit]Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopedia. (2021, May 7). Bose-Einstein statistics. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved June 5, 2022, from https://www.britannica.com/science/Bose-Einstein-statistics
Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopedia. (2022, January 31). Satyendra Nath Bose. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved June 5, 2022, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Satyendra-Nath-Bose
Subramanian, S. (2012, July 6). For the Indian father of the 'God particle,' a long journey from Dhaka. India Ink. Retrieved June 5, 2022, from https://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/06/the-man-behind-boson/