Colonial Calcutta as a Nexus of Scientific Development

I began research for this post with a sense that most American media which celebrate Asian and Asian American history, such as AAPI month celebrations, often tend to leave out South Asians or maybe only include a few of them seemingly as an afterthought. I decided to dive into the Emilio Segrè Visual Archives to see what I could find and possibly help remedy that situation. What I found was a vast and fascinating history of South Asian scientists not just making contributions to but often leading the way in 20th century physics. I found so much, in fact, that for both my own sanity and that of our readers, I decided (read: it was strongly recommended to me) to split this post into two parts.

This first post will focus on the scientists who were at the forefront of scientific research in what would become the intellectual powerhouse of Calcutta (now Kolkata), then under the control of the colonial British government. We will meet the scientists themselves and learn about the institutions they founded, which paved the way for India’s advancement as a modern scientific leader. The second part of this series will move away from colonial Calcutta to the post-Independence era, as well as focusing more on South Asian American scientists.

A brief note about place names: the names of the cities mentioned in this article changed after India gained independence from the British in 1947. When a city is mentioned for the first time, I will give the name that was used at the time of the photographs and events described with the current name in parentheses (as seen above with Calcutta/Kolkata). Afterwards I will use the name as it was known to the people at the given time.

Mahendralal Sircar (1833-1904)

Mahendralal Sircar (often spelled as Mahendra Lal Sircar or Sarcar) was one of the earliest champions for modern science and science education in India, and was often referred to as the “Father of Modern Science in India.” He was also a staunch patriot who, as Sumathi Ramanath argues in her PhD dissertation , promoted science education as a nationalistic endeavor to encourage India’s development as an independent nation.

Born November 2, 1833, to a poor family in the village of Paikpara, near Calcutta, Mahendralal Sircar developed a reputation as an outstanding student among his teachers as early as primary school. He eventually attended the Hindu College in Calcutta, where he developed an insatiable thirst for scientific knowledge, eventually moving on to Calcutta Medical College. While Sircar is best known for his studies in medicine, he was something of a polymath with interests in all sciences, even becoming a Life Member of the British Association for Advancement of Science and the French Astronomical Society, this in addition to his interests outside of the sciences in literature, history, philosophy, music, religion, and the arts. His crowning achievement was the establishment of the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS) on July 29, 1876, which he envisioned as a hub for the advancement of all sciences and which contributed immensely to the explosion of intellectual activity in 19th and 20th-century Bengal. The IACS flourished with the contributions of world-renowned physicists such as C.V. Raman and Jagadish Chandra Bose, who we will meet later in this article. In an address given to the IACS in 1962 to commemorate the anniversary of Sircar’s death, then-President Satyendra Nath Bose said of Sircar’s establishment of the Association (translated from Bengali):

C.V. Raman (1888-1970)

Born November 7, 1888, in Tiruchirappalli in what is now Tamil Nadu, India, Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata (C.V.) Raman was one of the most influential figures in 20th century Indian science. He is best known for his discovery of the Raman Effect in 1928, which earned him the Nobel Prize in 1930 “for his work on the scattering of light and for the discovery of the effect named after him.” However, there was much more to his career besides his work in what would come to be known as Raman Spectroscopy.

While he earned his bachelor’s degree at only 15 years old from Presidency College in Madras (now Chennai) in 1904 and a master’s degree in 1907, Raman had a difficult time finding physics-related work after graduation. In order to support himself he became an accountant for the local government in Calcutta, though he continued to carry out experiments during his free time at the IACS. It was there that he distinguished himself by publishing 27 research papers, particularly about the acoustics of musical instruments such as the violin, veena , tambura , tabla , and mridangam . He also became known for his talent as a lecturer and greatly contributed to the IACS, which was becoming recognized as a thriving hub of scientific research. In recognition of his work, he was offered the Palit Chair of Physics at Calcutta University, which paid less than his comfortable civil service job but allowed him to continue his scientific work full-time. It was during his time in Calcutta that he did his Nobel Prize-winning work on the scattering of light.

Three years after winning the Nobel, Raman moved south to Bangalore (now Bengaluru) where he stayed for the remainder of his career. There he contributed greatly to India’s national scientific enterprise: he served as the head of the Indian Institute of Science, founded the Indian Academy of Science, and started its Proceedings publication in 1934. In 1948 he founded and became Director of the Raman Research Institute, where he remained active for the rest of his life. India now celebrates the anniversary of his discovery of the Raman Effect, February 28, as National Science Day (check out our Instagram post ).

The Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS)

Thanks in large part to Sir C.V. Raman’s contributions, the IACS became known worldwide as a respected center of scientific discovery and research in the 1920s. Physicists from around the world would come to Calcutta to visit the association, including a young Werner Heisenberg—seen here being warmly welcomed on October 8, 1929. Before we get to Heisenberg however, let’s introduce the local scientists in attendance.

Unfortunately, I was unable to find any information about S.S. Rao or Abhijit Dey, nor could I identify those marked “unidentified” in the caption (if you know more, let us know at nbl@aip.org!). However, the other three are better known.

Debendra Mohan (D.M.) Bose (1885-1975)

Born in 1885, D.M. Bose made significant contributions to cosmic ray research and nuclear physics in India, as well as being a respected leader in the scientific community. He was one of only two Indian scientists to attend the Como Conference in Como, Italy, in 1927, along with M.N. Saha (you can see the two of them there in this photo , and a portrait of Bose from the conference). Bose was the longest-serving director of the Bose Institute, founded by his uncle Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose, who we will meet later in this article. Despite his immense contributions, he is often not as well-recognized as his contemporaries like C.V. Raman or his uncle J.C. Bose. A researcher who joined the Institute when D.M. Bose was director, S.C. Roy, explains this as such:

“I am of the opinion that in spite of his exceptional scientific achievements and significant contributions to the development of science and technology in India, Bose shied away from publicity, preferring to keep himself absorbed in studies and research. Although he was a storehouse of knowledge, his works did not get as much publicity because of his reticent nature.”

Kariamanikkam Srinivasa (K.S.) Krishnan (1898-1961)

Born December 4, 1898, in what is now Tamil Nadu province, K.S. Krishnan gained recognition early in his career as a student of C.V. Raman in Calcutta at the IACS, where the two of them carried out the experiments that would lead to the discovery of the Raman Effect. In fact, Krishnan and Raman published 14 more papers on the topic in the year following the initial publication. However, Raman alone was awarded the Nobel in 1930 for his research.

Following his work with Raman, Krishnan went on to join the faculty of Dacca University (now Dhaka University or University of Dhaka in today’s Bangladesh) at the invitation of Satyendra Nath Bose in 1929, where he studied dia- and para-magnetism. In 1933 he was invited back to Calcutta to serve as the Mahendralal Sircar Professor of Physics at the IACS, where his work on magnetism earned him increased recognition. He was invited by scientists like Lord Rutherford at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge and Sir William Bragg to give lectures at the Royal Institution in London. It was during this time in 1940 that he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Two years later, he moved once again to the University of Allahabad to succeed M.N. Saha as Professor and Head of the Department of Physics. His work there earned him the recognition of future Prime Minister of independent India Jawaharlal Nehru, who appointed Krishnan as Director of the National Physical Laboratory in New Delhi as well as a founding member of the Atomic Energy Commission. Nehru is famously quoted as saying of Krishnan: “He is a great scientist, but something much more. He is a perfect citizen, a whole man with an integrated personality.”

Satyendranath Bose (also written as S.N. Bose or Satyendra Nath Bose) (1894-1974)

We will meet S.N. Bose later in this article so I will keep this brief, but by the time of this picture he was already a well-regarded figure in the world of quantum physics, having developed a correspondence and collaboration with Albert Einstein that led to the development of the eponymous Bose-Einstein statistics. He spent two years (1924-26) working in Europe with figures like Marie Curie and Maurice de Broglie, during which time he met many other prominent European physicists, Heisenberg among them. At the time of this photograph Bose was serving as Dean of the Faculty of Science at Dacca University in today’s Dhaka, Bangladesh, but luckily happened to be in Calcutta at the same time as Heisenberg’s visit.

Heisenberg’s Visit

From biographical information on the scientists discussed above as well as some letters that Heisenberg sent back to his family in Germany, I was able to piece together the basics of what brought Heisenberg to India at this time. With the work of C.V. Raman and others, Calcutta had become known as one of the world’s great hubs of scientific activity. The Raman Effect had been publicized in 1928, a year before this photo was taken. That same year, Heisenberg’s doctoral advisor Arnold Sommerfeld had conducted a series of lectures at the IACS. In addition to reading the publications coming out of the IACS, Heisenberg likely heard much about the Association from his advisor and would have been interested in stopping there during his world tour of 1929, which took him across the United States to Japan and finally India.

Unlike his time in the US and Japan, however, Heisenberg does not seem to have gone to India to deliver any lectures. Rather, he seems to have made an almost surprise appearance in the city, though his acquaintance D.M. Bose (who had been studying and gotten stranded in Germany during the first World War) managed to quickly put together a festive welcome for him. This would explain the lavish garland of flowers that Heisenberg is wearing in the photo. In addition to visiting the IACS, Heisenberg also met later that afternoon with the Nobel laureate poet and polymath Rabindranath Tagore , with whom he spoke about science, Indian philosophy, and likely the Indian freedom movement, of which Tagore was a staunch proponent.

Heisenberg seems to have only spent about two days in Calcutta, from whence he went sightseeing in the Himalayan foothills in Darjeeling. Despite foggy weather that impaired his ability to see Mount Everest in the distance, he seems to have enjoyed his time there based on a letter he wrote home to his parents:

Following his Himalayan getaway, Heisenberg went back down to Calcutta and from there to Madras, where Presidency College student and future Nobel laureate Subramanyan Chandrasekhar served as his local tour guide. Heisenberg seems to have only spent about a day sightseeing in Madras with the young Chandrasekhar before boarding a boat for Colombo, capital of today’s Sri Lanka, where he toured for a few more days before finally boarding a boat back home to Germany.

Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858-1937), Abala Bose (1864-1951), and the Bose Institute

Sir Jagadish (also spelled Jagadis) Chandra Bose was one of the first Indian scientists to gain international renown and is often considered the founder of modern science on the subcontinent. He was a highly interdisciplinary physicist and inventor who created the first semiconductor device and photovoltaic cell, as well as the earliest waveguide and horn antenna used for microwave engineering and astronomy today. He discovered millimeter waves, now called microwaves, in 1894, and in 1895 he gave a demonstration in which he used microwaves to transmit a signal through three stone walls 75 feet away to a loaded pistol, which fired with a dramatic bang. This effectively began the science of wireless telegraphy, a feat for which Guglielmo Marconi would win the Nobel Prize with similar demonstrations in later years. Bose has not gone unrecognized in this field, however; the IEEE has named an award for wireless communications innovations after him.

His work with wireless communication instruments unexpectedly led him to decades of research at the intersection of physics and biology, wherein he espoused highly controversial theories on plants’ sensitivity to electric pulses, claiming that plants had something akin to a nervous system with which they could respond to environmental stimuli and arguing that they were far more like sentient creatures than was previously thought. His works generated such furor that many in the scientific community came to either be known as “Bosephiles” or “Bosephobes”—Stanford University plant physiologist (and ardent Bosephobe) George Peirce went so far as to write in 1927 that to be neutral with regard to Bose’s theories would “indicate either a degree of ignorance or a feebleness of backbone quite deplorable.”

Despite whatever pushback he received from mainstream European scientists, he also received a great deal of support both from other scientists as well as from cultural luminaries like Rabindranath Tagore, philosopher-monk Swami Vivekananda , Irish-born educator and activist Sister Nivedita , and American philanthropist Sara Chapman Bull . With such support, he was able to establish the Bose Institute on November 30, 1917. To this day, the Institute continues to produce significant work in the fields of plant physiology, physics, chemistry, biophysics, and more.

Of course, J.C. Bose accomplished none of this alone. While he had many supporters, his wife Lady Abala Bose, seated next to him in this photo, was one of his most ardent champions. That said, she did not simply play a support role but was a leader in her own right who advocated for women’s education and welfare in India. A well-educated woman herself (she and Bose met while she was in medical school) at a time when most women received little education, she wrote of the moral need for women’s education in periodicals like the Modern Review and established the organization Nari Siksha Samiti , a non-profit dedicated to educating women and girls. Within her lifetime alone, Abala Bose established about 275 primary schools and 32 adult education centers throughout pre-Partition Bengal, as well as institutions like Mahila Shilpa Bhavan in Calcutta which provided education and vocational training for widows and other vulnerable adult women. This work led her to also establish the Vidyasagar Bani Bhawan Primary Teachers’ Training Institute “to provide vocational training to distressed women and widows so that they may earn their living in honorable means and get established as respected citizens of the society,” which is still active today.

Satyendra Nath Bose (1894-1974)

As we saw previously in the IACS group photo, Satyendra Nath (S.N.) Bose was among the many luminaries of the scientific world in early 20th century India. As a young physicist in Calcutta, it was he who translated Einstein’s works on relativity into English for publication in local journals. Subsequently Bose wrote directly to Einstein in 1924 to send him a paper describing his novel derivation of Planck’s radiation formula. That paper would quickly become a major catalyst in the shift from the old quantum theory of Planck, Einstein, Bohr, and Sommerfeld to the new quantum mechanics of Heisenberg, Dirac, and Schrodinger. Having had no luck getting his paper published in any English-language journals in England, he instead asked Einstein to assess his work and, if he found it worthwhile, translate it into German and publish it in the journal Zeitschrift für Physik. Einstein agreed to translate Bose’s work and submit it to the journal, noting in his reply that Bose’s work: “signified an important step forward and I liked it very much ... You are the first to derive the factor quantum theoretically, even though because of the polarization factor 2 not wholly rigorously. It is a beautiful step forward.”

Despite the influence that Bose’s work would have on the emerging field of quantum mechanics (the particles called bosons were named after him, as are Bose-Einstein condensate, statistics, distribution, and correlations) and the work he would do later in life, Bose’s Royal Society memoir reduces his derivation of Planck’s formula to “the only significant contribution which he made to physics.” While he may not necessarily have made any new groundbreaking discoveries beyond this in the traditional sense, I think this wording severely sells short the immense contributions he made as a leader in establishing India and Bangladesh’s institutions of modern science and education. In addition to his professorships at Dacca University and Calcutta University, he was also a champion of making science more accessible through instruction in “the mother tongue.” In 1931 he published his first scientific article in Bengali, and in 1948 he founded the Bangiya Vijnan Parishad (Science Association of Bengal) and its monthly journal Jnan-O-Bijnan in order to popularize the teaching of science in Bengali language. He continued to advocate for native-language education throughout his life, stating in an address in 1962 in Hyderabad given in Bengali: “The fruits of freedom should not be confined to a handful of English-educated people; they must reach one and all.”

Bose also served as the President of the Indian Physical Society from 1945-1948, the National Institute of Sciences of India (now the Indian National Science Academy) from 1949 to 1950, and of the IACS from 1958 to 1962. In 1954, he was specially nominated to the upper house of the Indian Parliament (the same year he was awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India’s second-highest civilian award), and in 1959 he was named as the National Professor. Between his decades of teaching and numerous leadership roles in promoting scientific research, communication, and education in India, I think it is fair to say that S.N. Bose made plenty of “significant contributions to physics.”

Conclusion

I hope you have enjoyed meeting a few of the scientists who established the foundational infrastructure for India’s scientific enterprise. Stay tuned for Part 2, where we will meet two of the scientists who brought India into the nuclear age, a former high school physics teacher with a talent for musical instruments and a penchant for African violets, the “Father of Fiber Optics,” and more!

References

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