Jagadish Chandra Bose: The Indian Scientist Who Deserved Two Nobel Prizes

It is about 1895. An Indian scientist invited some friends for dinner to show them his new invention.

He wanted to show how radio waves could even pass through walls. He showed an experiment in which ringing a bell in one room caused gunpowder to explode in another room. All his friends were amazed!

This experiment was successful because of his invention – “Mercury Coherer Radio Wave Receiver.” That night, knowingly or unknowingly, he laid the foundation of wireless communication.

The Indian scientist we are talking about is Jagadish Chandra Bose. And one of the friends who came to his house that night was Guglielmo Marconi.

Today is the birth anniversary of Shri Jagadish Chandra Bose. Let's meet him:

➖ Jagadish Chandra Bose was born in Bengal. After completing his schooling and college, he went to study Natural Sciences at London University.

➖ Radio was an invention that had many brilliant minds behind it. It is not possible to identify any one person as the inventor of the radio.

➖ The race for radio equipment was started by James Clerk Maxwell, who predicted electromagnetic waves. His research was carried forward by Heinrich Hertz, then Bose conducted studies on microwaves and proved that radio waves could pass through solid objects.

➖ Meanwhile, Marconi was also working on radio waves but his research got stuck at one place. Bose's invention of the “Mercury Coherer” accelerated Marconi's radio development.

➖ Marconi wanted to commercialize wireless technology, but Bose was against it. Many people pressured Bose to patent his invention, but he said, “I am only interested in research, not in making money.”

➖ Marconi used Bose's invention, but never gave him credit. Bose faced racial discrimination at that time, and his contributions were forgotten. Marconi received the Nobel Prize for radio in 1909.

➖ Bose further used semiconductor junctions to detect radio waves. Nobel laureate Sir Neville Mott believed that Bose was 60 years ahead of contemporary science in envisioning the P-N-type semiconductor.

➖ Bose's contribution to radio technology was kept in the dark and came to light only recently. Francesco Marconi, grandson of G. Marconi himself, in one of his lectures, addressed Bose as the inventor of radio, and his grandfather as its propagator. Additionally, the international organization IEEE gave Bose the title of ‘Father of Radio Science’.

Many scientists believe that Bose deserved two Nobel Prizes – one for his research on radio waves and the other for his semiconductor research.

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