Bose was born inCalcutta (now Kolkata), the eldest of seven children in aBengali Kayastha family.[11] Bose's father was Surendra Nath. Bose's mother was (Smt.) Amodini Debi. Surendra was an accountant and worked inEast India Railways.[12] Bose was the only son, with six sisters after him. His ancestral home was in the village Bara Jagulia, in the district ofNadia, in theBengal Presidency. His schooling began at the age of five, near his home. When his family moved to Goabagan, he was admitted into the New Indian School. In his final year of school, he was admitted into theHindu School. He passed his entrance examination (matriculation) in 1909 and stood fifth in the order of merit. He then joined the intermediate science course at thePresidency College,Calcutta, where his teachers includedJagadish Chandra Bose,Sarada Prasanna Das, andPrafulla Chandra Ray.
After completing his MSc, Bose joined theScience College, Calcutta University as a research scholar in 1916 and started his studies in thetheory of relativity. It was an exciting era in the history of scientific progress.Quantum theory had just appeared on the horizon and significant results had started pouring in.[13]
His father, Surendranath Bose, worked in the Engineering Department of theEast Indian Railway Company. In 1914, at age 20, Satyendra Nath Bose married Ushabati Ghosh,[3][14] the 11-year-old daughter of a prominent Calcutta physician.[15] They had nine children, two of whom died in early childhood. When he died in 1974, he left behind his wife, two sons, and five daughters.[13]
As apolyglot, Bose was well versed in several languages such asBengali, English, French, German andSanskrit as well as the poetry ofLord Tennyson,Rabindranath Tagore andKalidasa. In Europe, he impressed his hostJacqueline Zadoc-Kahn with his knowledge ofHebrew in literature and religion.[16] He could play theesraj, an Indian instrument similar to a violin.[17] He was actively involved in running night schools that came to be known as the Working Men's Institute.[7][18]
Bose attendedHindu School inCalcutta, and laterattendedPresidency College, also in Calcutta, earning the highest marks at each institution, while fellow student and future astrophysicistMeghnad Saha came second.[7] He came in contact with teachers such asJagadish Chandra Bose, Prafulla Chandra Ray and Naman Sharma who provided inspiration to aim high in life. From 1916 to 1921, he was a lecturer in thephysics department of theRajabazar Science College underUniversity of Calcutta. Along with Saha, Bose prepared the first book in English based on German and French translations of original papers on Einstein's special and general relativity in 1919.
Bose, along with Indian AstrophysicistMeghnad Saha, presented several papers in theoretical physics and pure mathematics from 1918 onwards. In 1924, whilst a Reader in the Physics Department of theUniversity of Dhaka, Bose wrote a paper derivingPlanck's quantum radiation law without any reference toclassical physics by using a novel way of counting states withidentical particles. This paper was seminal in creating the important field ofquantum statistics.[21] Though not accepted at once for publication, he sent the article directly toAlbert Einstein in Germany. Einstein, recognising the importance of the paper, translated it into German himself and submitted it on Bose's behalf to theZeitschrift für Physik. As a result of this recognition, Bose was able to work for two years in EuropeanX-ray andcrystallography laboratories, during which he worked withLouis de Broglie,Marie Curie, and Einstein.[7][22][23][24]
While presenting a lecture[25] at theUniversity of Dhaka on the theory ofradiation and theultraviolet catastrophe, Bose intended to show his students that the contemporary theory was inadequate, because it predicted results not in accordance with experimental results.
In the process of describing this discrepancy, Bose for the first time took the position that theMaxwell–Boltzmann distribution would not be true for microscopic particles, where fluctuations due toHeisenberg's uncertainty principle will be significant. Thus he stressed the probability of finding particles in thephase space, each state having volumeh3, and discarding the distinct position andmomentum of the particles.
Bose adapted this lecture into a short article called "Planck's Law and the Hypothesis of Light Quanta" and sent it toAlbert Einstein with the following letter:[26]
Respected Sir, I have ventured to send you the accompanying article for your perusal and opinion. I am anxious to know what you think of it. You will see that I have tried to deduce the coefficient8π ν2/c3 in Planck's Law independent of classical electrodynamics, only assuming that the ultimate elementary region in the phase-space has the contenth3. I do not know sufficient German to translate the paper. If you think the paper worth publication I shall be grateful if you arrange for its publication inZeitschrift für Physik. Though a complete stranger to you, I do not feel any hesitation in making such a request. Because we are all your pupils though profiting only by your teachings through your writings. I do not know whether you still remember that somebody from Calcutta asked your permission to translate your papers on Relativity in English. You acceded to the request. The book has since been published. I was the one who translated your paper on Generalised Relativity.
Einstein agreed with him, translated Bose's papers "Planck's Law and Hypothesis of Light Quanta" into German, and had it published inZeitschrift für Physik under Bose's name, in 1924.[27]
Possible outcomes of flipping two coins
Two heads
Two tails
One of each
(1) There are three outcomes. What is the probability of producing two heads?
Outcome probabilities
Coin 1
Head
Tail
Coin 2
Head
HH
HT
Tail
TH
TT
(2) Since the coins are distinct, there are two outcomes which produce a head and a tail. The probability of two heads is one-quarter.
The reason Bose's interpretation produced accurate results was that since photons are indistinguishable from each other, one cannot treat any two photons having equal energy as being two distinct identifiable photons. By analogy if, in an alternate universe, coins were to behave like photons and otherbosons, the probability of producing two heads would indeed be one-third (tail-head = head-tail).
Bose's interpretation is now calledBose–Einstein statistics. This result derived by Bose laid the foundation ofquantum statistics, and especially the revolutionary new philosophical conception of the indistinguishability of particles, as acknowledged by Einstein and Dirac.[27] When Einstein met Bose face-to-face, he asked him whether he had been aware that he had invented a new type of statistics, and he very candidly said that no, he wasn't that familiar withBoltzmann's statistics and didn't realize that he was doing the calculations differently.
Velocity-distribution data of a gas ofrubidium atoms, confirming the discovery of a new phase of matter,the Bose–Einstein condensate.[28] Left: just before the appearance of a Bose–Einstein condensate. Center: just after the appearance of the condensate. Right: after further evaporation, leaving a sample of nearly pure condensate.
Einstein also did not at first realize how radical Bose's departure was, and in his first paper after Bose, he was guided, like Bose, by the fact that the new method gave the right answer. But after Einstein's second paper using Bose's method in which Einstein predicted the Bose-Einstein condensate (pictured left), he started to realize just how radical it was, and he compared it to wave/particle duality, saying that some particles didn't behave exactly like particles. Bose had already submitted his article to the British JournalPhilosophical Magazine, which rejected it before he sent it to Einstein. It is not known why it was rejected.[29]
Einstein adopted the idea and extended it to atoms. This led to the prediction of the existence of phenomena which became known asBose–Einstein condensate, a dense collection ofbosons (which are particles with integerspin, named after Bose), which was demonstrated to exist by experiment in 1995.
After his stay in Europe, Bose returned toDhaka in 1926. He did not have a doctorate, and so ordinarily, under the prevailing regulations, he would not be qualified for the post of Professor he applied for, butEinstein recommended him. He was then madeHead of the Department ofPhysics atDhaka University. He continued guiding and teaching at Dhaka University and was theDean of the Faculty of Science there until 1945.
Bose designed equipment himself for anX-ray crystallography laboratory. He set up laboratories and libraries to make the department a center of research in X-ray spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, magnetic properties of matter, optical spectroscopy, wireless, andunified field theories. He also published anequation of state forreal gases withMeghnad Saha.
When thepartition of India became imminent (1947), he returned toCalcutta (now known as Kolkata) and taught there until 1956. He insisted every student design their own equipment using local materials and local technicians. He was madeprofessor emeritus on his retirement.[22][30][7] He then became Vice-Chancellor ofVisva-Bharati University inSantiniketan. He returned to the University of Calcutta to continue research in nuclear physics and complete earlier works in organic chemistry. In subsequent years, he worked in applied research such as extraction ofhelium in hot springs ofBakreshwar.[31]
Apart from physics, he did research inbiotechnology and literature (Bengali and English). He made studies inchemistry, geology,zoology,anthropology, engineering and other sciences. BeingBengali, he devoted significant time to promotingBengali as a teaching language, translating scientific papers into it, and promoting the development of the region.[23][32][6]
In 1937,Rabindranath Tagore dedicated his only book on science,Visva–Parichay, to Satyendra Nath Bose. Bose was honoured with the titlePadma Vibhushan by the Indian Government in 1954. In 1959, he was appointed as the National Professor, the highest honour in the country for a scholar, a position he held for 15 years. In 1986, theS.N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences was established by an act of Parliament, Government of India, in Salt Lake, Calcutta.[33][34]
Bose was nominated byK. Banerjee (1956),D.S. Kothari (1959), S.N. Bagchi (1962), and A.K. Dutta (1962) for the Nobel Prize in Physics, for his contribution toBose–Einstein statistics and theunified field theory. Banerjee, head of the Physics Department,University of Allahabad, in a letter of 12 January 1956 wrote to theNobel Committee as follows: "(1). He (Bose) made very outstanding contributions to physics by developing the statistics known after his name as Bose statistics. In recent years this statistics is found to be of profound importance in the classifications offundamental particles and has contributed immensely to the development ofnuclear physics. (2). During the period from 1953 to date, he has made a number of highly interesting contributions of far-reaching consequences on the subject of Einstein'sUnitary Field Theory." Bose's work was evaluated by an expert of the Nobel Committee,Oskar Klein, who deemed his work not worthy of the Nobel Prize.[35][36][37]
Bosons, a class of elementarysubatomic particles inparticle physics were named by Dirac after Satyendra Nath Bose to commemorate his contributions to science.[38][39]
Soviet Nobel laureateLev Landau kept a list of names of physicists which he ranked on a logarithmic scale of productivity ranging from 1 to 5. Albert Einstein was ranked 0.5. Landau awarded a rank of 1 to Bose along with the founding fathers ofquantum mechanics,Niels Bohr,Werner Heisenberg,Paul Dirac andErwin Schrödinger, and others. Landau ranked himself as a 2.5 but later promoted to a 2.[40][41]
In his bookThe Scientific Edge, physicistJayant Narlikar observed:
SN Bose's work on particle statistics (c. 1922), which clarified the behaviour ofphotons (theparticles of light in an enclosure) and opened the door to new ideas on statistics of Microsystems that obey the rules of quantum theory, was one of the top ten achievements of 20th century Indian science and could be considered in the Nobel Prize class.[42]
When Bose himself was once asked that question, he replied, "I have got all the recognition I deserve."[43]
One of the main academic buildings ofUniversity of Rajshahi, the No 1 science building has been named after him.
The 4 June 2022Google Doodle featured Bose, on the 98th anniversary of his sending his work to Einstein.[44][45][46]
^abBarran, Michel, "Bose, Satyendranath (1894–1974)",Science world (biography), Wolfram,archived from the original on 1 August 2018, retrieved24 January 2006.
^Farmelo, Graham, "The Strangest Man",Notes on Dirac's lectureDevelopments in Atomic Theory at Le Palais de la Découverte, 6 December 1945, UKNATARCHI Dirac Papers, p. 331, note 64, BW83/2/257889.
^Md Mahbub Murshed (2012),"Bose, Satyendra Nath", in Sirajul Islam and Ahmed A. Jamal (ed.),Banglapedia: National Encyclopedia of Bangladesh (Second ed.),Asiatic Society of Bangladesh,archived from the original on 7 January 2019, retrieved6 July 2016
^abShanbhag, MR."Scientist".Personalities. Calcutta web. Archived fromthe original on 2 August 2002.
^abO'Connor, JJ; Robertson, EF (October 2003)."Satyendranath Bose".The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive. UK: St Andrew's.Archived from the original on 18 September 2015. Retrieved1 February 2012.
^Singh, Rajinder (2016)India's Nobel Prize Nominators and Nominees – The Praxis of Nomination and Geographical Distribution, Shaker Publisher, Aachen, pp. 26–27.ISBN978-3-8440-4315-0
^Singh, Rajinder (2016)Die Nobelpreise und die indische Elite, Shaker Verlag, Aachen, pp. 24–25.ISBN978-3-8440-4429-4
^Singh, Rajinder (2016)Chemistry and Physics Nobel Prizes – India's Contribution, Shaker Verlag, Aachen.ISBN978-3-8440-4669-4.
