Jagadish Chandra Bose: The first modern scientist by Dilip M. Salwi, Rupa & Co, Rs 95, ISBN 8171676812
THIS pocket-size book starts off with a great bang: Bose鈥檚 demonstration of the transmission of radio waves in 1895 at the Town Hall in Calcutta. An enthusiastic experimenter, he had hooked up a model cannon, a pistol and a charge of gunpowder to a receiver in one room, with a transmitter several rooms distant. The British Lieutenant Governor was invited to throw a switch, whereupon the cannon and pistol fired and the gunpowder exploded.
He was originally sent to England to become a doctor, but turned to physics instead. With few resources Bose made so many advances in the science of radio waves that he eventually reached international fame and was admired by such contemporaries as Kelvin, J. J. Thomson and Oliver Lodge. He received a knighthood and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. A pioneer in biophysics, in 1917 he founded the Bose Institute in Calcutta for research into what had become his major interest.
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In spite of all this, Bose remains an obscure figure. This little biography is a flash of merited illumination. It is one of a series of biographies from Rupa about Indian notables, written in simple and amiable style in order to reach the widest possible market.