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The influence of rich Bengali culture tradition and British-Indian politics on the professional life of Satyendra Nath Bose, the originator of quantum statistics, is discussed. Bose has tried to deduce the coefficient 8πv 2/c 3 in Planck's law independent of the classical electrodynamics, assuming the ultimate elementary regions in the Phase-space that has the content h 3. Bose has discussed the theory of an ideal gas with Albert Einstein and Bose's derivation of Planck's law was considered to be the final revolutionary paper of the old quantum theory. Einstein proposed two problems for Bose to work on, which include whether the new statistics implied a novel type of interaction between light quanta, and how the statistics of light quanta and transition probabilities would look in the the new quantum mechanics.
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46 October 2006 Physics Today
©
2006 American Institute of Physics, S-0031-9228-0610-030-7
On 4 June 1924, a relatively unknown Satyendra Nath
Bose from Dacca University in East Bengal, India, sent a short
article to Albert Einstein with an accompanying letter (see
figure 1), which begins
1
Respected Sir,
I have ventured to send you the accompanying
article for your perusal and opinion. I am anx-
ious to know what you think of it. You will see
that I have tried to deduce the coefficient 8πν
2
/c
3
in Planck’s law independent of the classical elec-
trodynamics only assuming that the ultimate el-
ementary regions in the Phase-space has the con-
tent h
3
. I do not know sufficient German to
translate the paper. If you think the paper worth
publication, I shall be grateful if you arrange its
publication in Zeitscrift für Physik.
Bose goes on:
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. . . .
Yours faithfully,
S. N. Bose
Einstein’s reply came in a postcard dated 2 July 1924 (fig-
ure 2) on which he wrote, “I have translated your paper and
given it to Zeitscrift für Physik for publication. It signifies an
important step forward and pleases me very much.” In a note
appended to his translation and published with the paper,
2
Einstein says that Bose’s derivation “appears to me an im-
portant step forward. The method used here also yields the
quantum theory of an ideal gas, as I shall show elsewhere.”
In fact, Bose’s concern was radiation, for which the number
of photons was not conserved; Einstein’s generalization was
to massive particles whose numbers were fixed.
On 10 July 1924, within a week or so after receiving
Bose’s paper, Einstein presented his own paper to the Prus-
sian Academy of Sciences. Titled “On the Quantum Theory
of the Monoatomic Gas,” it was an extension of Bose’s work.
Einstein followed up that paper with two more in 1925, the
second of which is well known for its prediction of a possi-
ble new state of matter whose existence took 70 additional
years to demonstrate—the Bose–Einstein condensate.
According to Abraham Pais, Bose’s derivation of Planck’s
law was the fourth and last of the revolutionary papers of the
old quantum theory, the other three being by Max Planck,
Einstein, and Niels Bohr.
3
Indeed, Bose’s derivation of
Planck’s law was simple and straightforward, but it implied
three novel and radical features. First, blackbody radiation
consisted of zero-mass, particle-like light quanta of momen-
tum hν/c and energy hν. Second, Bose made no reference to
classical theory. Independent stationary vibrations were re-
placed by the number of cells in one-particle phase space.
Third, the probability law Bose used in distributing the num-
ber of quanta in the frequency range from ν to ν+dν among
cells implied a new kind of statistical dependence or inter-
action between light quanta and, in Einstein’s extension, be-
tween material particles. That feature is often called indis-
tinguishability.
4
Another Laplace or Cauchy
Thanks to his remarkable discovery, and with his name asso-
ciated with Einstein, Bose became a legendary figure in the
20th-century science of India. Outside India, however, little is
known about him. Even in India, his name is often confused
with that of Jagdish Chandra Bose, the 19th-century Indian sci-
entist who received wide international recognition for his ex-
periments with wireless transmission and with plants.
Born on 1 January 1894 in Calcutta (now Kolkata), the
capital of British India and the largest city in the state of Ben-
gal, S. N. Bose, as he is often called, was the only son and the
eldest of seven children of Surendra Nath and Amodini Bose.
Bose’s family, with two generations of English education, be-
longed originally to the Bara Jagulia village in the district of
Nadia, known for its traditional learning of Sanskrit scrip-
tures and its scholars. According to family records, the fam-
ily lived in the village for more than three centuries. With the
advent of the British Raj, Nadia lost its importance and the
family moved to Calcutta.
Bose’s father was an accountant with the East India Rail-
way. Although working in the British civil service, he was a
part of the rising English-educated middle class—a group
that was deeply influenced by mid-19th-century European
rationalism and individualism, yet was developing a rising
nationalism opposed to British colonization. His son would
inherit his wide range of interests, including mathematics,
science, and philosophy.
Bose grew up in a normal extended family, with a lov-
ing mother, younger sisters, uncles and aunts, and a strict fa-
ther who, as was customary in families of India, commanded
The man behind Bose
statistics
Kameshwar Wali
Kamesh Wali is an emeritus and research professor in the department of physics at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York.
A rich Bengali cultural tradition, British–Indian politics, and a two-year stint in Europe all helped
Satyendra Nath Bose become a renaissance man as well as the originator of quantum statistics.
www.physicstoday.org October 2006 Physics Today 47
more respect than overt love. Bose’s formal education began
at the age of five in a school near the family’s home, but he
switched a few years later to the Hindu School, an institution
of great tradition and distinction. From all accounts, Bose’s
teachers recognized him as a gifted child. Despite his weak
eyesight, he was a voracious reader of Bengali, Sanskrit, and
English literature, well versed in the poetry of Rabindranath
Tagore, Kálidása, and Alfred Lord Tennyson. His mathemat-
ics teacher in the Hindu School recognized him as a genius
in mathematics and proclaimed that he would one day
be known as another Pierre Simon Laplace or Augustin
Louis Cauchy.
By the time he joined Presidency College in Calcutta in
1909, Bose, despite his natural aptitude for languages and hu-
manities, had decided to pursue science. That choice was
partly motivated by the prevailing nationalistic sentiment ig-
nited by the partition of Bengal in 1905. By partitioning Ben-
gal, Lord Curzon, one of the most imperialistic, reactionary
viceroys of British India, had intended to curb Bengal’s in-
fluence on the rising national struggle for independence. In-
stead his action created a furor against the Raj and initiated
a strong “swadeshi” movement of self-sufficiency. Swadeshi
was characterized by a boycott of foreign goods, a public
burning of British mill textiles, reliance on homespun indus-
tries, and street gatherings of people singing patriotic songs.
Rakhi-bandhan, a popular festival in North India in which a
sister ties a colored thread (rakhi) around a brothers wrist as
a mark of protection, was converted into a solidarity pledge
between all peoples, with Hindus and Muslims exchanging
rakhis. Among the young, swadeshi generated a strong na-
tional awareness and dedication to national service. Talented
students like Bose thought science, engineering, and tech-
nology were the ways to lead the country to progress and
prosperity.
The year 1909 was remarkable in the history of Presidency
College and in the scientific history of Bengal. The college’s en-
tering class included a group of extremely talented students
who would make their mark in original research and play a
dominant role in the scientific and economic development of
free India. The brightest among them was Bose. Meghnad
Saha, who was to become Bose’s close friend and research col-
laborator,
5
joined Presidency College two years later.
United in their nationalistic ideals, the Presidency group
was a part of both overt and clandestine activities in the
swadeshi movement. Some of the students risked their ca-
reers. Some became members of the National Revolutionary
Movement—one of several independence-minded groups in
British colonial India—based in the state of Bengal. Upon the
outbreak of World War I, its members began to organize an
armed rebellion. In that politically charged atmosphere, sev-
eral people, notably Manabendranath Roy (1887–1954) and
Abani Mukherjee (1891–1937), left the country to secure arms
from Germany. Bose was in contact with Mukherjee and
helped him in many ways. Roy and Mukherjee went on to
help start the Communist Party of India in 1920.
Bose, however, was under strict orders from his father
not to get involved in any activities that might spell the end
of his potentially brilliant career. As the eldest and only son,
he was made aware of his responsibilities to the family. Bose
obeyed his father, but he remained a strong supporter of
those who participated in the swadeshi movement, helping
Figure 1. Satyendra Nath Bose in Paris in 1925. It
was from Dacca in 1924 that Bose sent Einstein this
letter accompanying his manuscript on Planck’s
blackbody radiation law. (Photo courtesy of Falguni
Sarkar; letter from ref. 10.)
48 October 2006 Physics Today www.physicstoday.org
in whatever way he could, sometimes acting as a courier,
sometimes providing shelter to fugitives from police pursuit,
and sometimes helping out with money. And through his
college years, he took part in running the night schools for
working-class children; those schools came to be known as
the Working Men’s Institute. He strongly believed that
enlightenment and self-awareness through the education of
the masses was vital to independence.
Though Bose obeyed his fathers political injunction, he
rebelled against the paternal wish for him to avoid wasting
his time on music. Not a respectable occupation, music nev-
ertheless ran in Bose’s veins, and he became an accomplished
musician (see figure 3).
Postgraduate ups and downs
Bose completed his BSc degree in 1913 and his MSc in 1915,
and he secured first place in both examinations; Saha took
second place. Both Bose and Saha, however, faced a grim sit-
uation, with no opportunities for further study or research or
for any jobs. In the meantime, when he was only 20 years old
and still a student in his MSc classes, Bose and Ushabati
Ghosh were married. Ushabati was the only daughter of a
renowned and rich doctor, Jogindranath Ghosh. Bose was not
keen to get married so early, but he could not go against his
mothers wishes. Marriage in India at an early age, when still
in college, was very common then and remains common
today. Bose was exceptional in neither accepting a dowry nor
seeking monetary help from his wife’s family when he faced
difficult financial situations. If he wanted, he could very well
have received support from his father-in-law for a trip abroad
for higher studies, a prevalent practice. The couple’s first
child was born soon after Bose received his MSc degree.
Unemployed, both Bose and Saha spent a year earning
what they could from private tutoring. Bose tried to work to-
ward a doctorate degree in mathematics under Ganesh
Prasad, who had just joined the University of Calcutta. Com-
ing from Banaras, where he used to set up hard questions for
MSc examinations, Prasad had a reputation for his scholar-
ship. “The young students who flocked to him for research
guidance, but had not fared so well in his exams, had to stom-
ach adverse comments about their former teachers, too
scared to answer back,” recalled Bose. “After my MSc I too
presented myself before Ganesh Prasad who was also my ex-
aminer though I had not fared as badly as the others [on
Prasad’s exam questions]. Dr. Prasad was kind to me at first
but I was notorious for plain speaking. I found it difficult to
bear his tirade against my teachers. I had dared to counter
his adverse criticisms. This infuriated him. He said, ‘You may
have done well in the examination but that does not mean
you are cut for research.’ Disappointed, I came away. I de-
cided to work on my own.”
6
He also decided to apply for a teaching position adver-
tised by the government of Bihar—a state neighboring
Bengal—but was turned down because he was overqualified.
His attempt to get a job at a meteorological office met the
same fate. Just as the situation looked most bleak, a splendid
opportunity presented itself. It came from Asutosh Mooker-
jee, the vice chancellor of the University of Calcutta, who was
a distinguished mathematician with a strong interest in
physics. But Mookerjee had had no opportunities for contin-
uing his mathematical research and advanced studies, so he
had opted for law and rose to eminence as a judge of the
Calcutta high court.
With generous financial help from two other lawyers,
Taraknath Palit and Rashbehari Ghosh, Mookerjee estab-
lished the University College of Science as part of the Uni-
versity of Calcutta. The college, which started functioning in
1916, emphasized advanced courses and basic research. As
Bose writes,
One day we were called up by Sir Asutosh.
Meghnad, Sailen [Ghosh] and I went up the
steep stairs to the library, to the special chamber
where Sir Asutosh sat. We were naturally meek
and submissive and overawed by his august pres-
ence. He had heard that the younger generation
wanted more modern subjects to be introduced in
the University curriculum. He asked, “What sub-
jects are you competent to teach, boys?”
“Sir, we will try our best to teach whatever you
want us to.” He smiled. We had only heard of the
many new discoveries in physics, most of them
made in Germany—new developments and new
discoveries. Planck, Einstein, Bohr—we Bengalis
had only heard of them. To know more about
them one had to read books in German or re-
search journals in other languages. During the
war most of these journals did not come to India.
At long last, as the first step to a new career,
we were given a special allowance of 125 rupees
per month. Meghnad was assigned to study
quantum theory and I had to learn Einstein’s rel-
ativity theory. We came away committing our-
selves to being prepared to teach within a year.
But where were we to get the books from? There
were some books in English on relativity; we got
hold of them. But where could we get hold of the
writings of Boltzmann, Kirchhoff, Planck?
6
Help again came from an unexpected source. Bose knew
a P. J. Bruhl, who was teaching engineering physics in the
Bengal Engineering College at Sibpur. Bruhl, who had a doc-
torate in botany, had come to Calcutta from Germany on a
scholarship to study flora in India. However, tuberculosis
compelled him to avoid outdoor activities, so he had
switched to physics, an indoor subject.
Bruhl had an excellent collection of German-language
science books, advanced texts, and physics journals. Bose and
Saha could not have asked for more. They borrowed what-
ever books they could lay their hands on—books by Planck,
Ludwig Boltzmann, Wilhelm Wien, and others. Saha had
taken pains to learn German; Bose knew French and was tak-
ing lessons in German. Together they prepared themselves to
teach advanced modern physics and forged a collaboration
in research.
In 1919, Einstein’s theory of general relativity received
worldwide acclaim due to the confirmation of its predictions
that a gravitational field would bend light. Immediately, the
young self-taught stalwarts took it on themselves to translate
the original papers on special and general relativity.
7
Bose
and Saha’s book of the translations was the first such collec-
tion in English.
Two years later, Bose got an offer of a readership at a
higher salary from the newly established university in Dacca
in East Bengal. (Presently called Dhaka University, it is now
in Bangladesh.) The school’s vice chancellor, P. J. Hartog, was
a visionary committed to excellence. He handpicked Bose,
who soon found himself with the task of building a new
department—including setting up laboratories—to teach ad-
vanced courses for BSc honors and MSc students. Bose taught
thermodynamics and Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism.
The library was being replenished with books and journals.
And just as his first group of students was graduating in 1923,
www.physicstoday.org October 2006 Physics Today 49
Bose got a letter notifying him that his appointment would
not be extended beyond a year. Conflict between the gov-
ernment of India and the provincial government of Bengal
had resulted in the cutoff of funds for the university. Bose be-
came involved in a long struggle to keep his appointment.
It was under such troubled circumstances that he wrote
his famous paper
8
and sent it for publication late in 1923 or
early in 1924 to Philosophical Magazine. Six months later, when
the editors informed him that the referee’s report was nega-
tive, he sent his rejected paper to Einstein. Meanwhile, dur-
ing a friendly visit to Dacca in March 1924, Saha brought to
Bose’s attention new attempts by Wolfgang Pauli and by Ein-
stein and Paul Ehrenfest to derive Planck’s law. Saha’s visit
got Bose thinking about the interaction between radiation
and matter and led to Bose writing a second paper that he
sent to Einstein at around the same time he sent his first.
Paris and Berlin
Einstein’s 2 July postcard was influential enough for Bose to
obtain a two-year study leave. He arrived in Paris in October
1924 and stayed in a pension that was the home of India As-
sociation, which helped visitors, students, and student ac-
tivists involved in the anti-British national movement with ac-
commodations and other needs. During his leave, Bose
intended to learn something new in the great laboratories of
Europe; the x-ray and crystallography laboratories of Maurice
de Broglie and the institute where Marie Curie worked on ra-
dioactivity were the obvious choices. Bose came to know Paul
Langevin and, with Langevin’s letter of introduction, went to
see Curie. “She greeted me affectionately,” wrote Bose, “and
said that there was no way she could disregard a recommen-
dation from such a person. You will certainly get an opportu-
nity to work in the laboratory, she said. But not right now, after
three or four months. Get to know the language, otherwise you
will find it difficult to work in the laboratory. She spoke in
chaste English for about ten minutes. I had no opportunity to
tell her that I knew a French of sorts. I had been at it for ten
years.”
9
Bose came away resigned to wait and chose to work
in de Broglie’s laboratory.
On 26 October, shortly after his arrival, he wrote to
Einstein:
Dear Master,
My heartfelt gratitude for taking the trouble of
translating the paper yourself and publishing it.
I just saw it in print before I left India. I have sent
you about the middle of June a second paper en-
titled “Thermal Equilibrium in the Radiation
Field in the Presence of Matter.”
I am rather anxious to know your opinion
about it, as I think it to be rather important. I
don’t know whether it will be possible also to
have this paper published in Zeit. für Physik.
I have been granted study leave by my Uni-
versity for 2 years. I have arrived just a week ago
in Paris. I don’t know whether it will be possible
for me to work with you in Germany. I will be
glad however if you grant me the permission to
work under you, for it will mean for me the re-
alisation of a long-cherished hope.
I shall wait for your decision as well as your
opinion of my second paper here in Paris.
If the second paper has not reached you by any
chance. Please let me know, I shall send you the
copy I have with me.
With respects,
Yours sincerely,
S N Bose (Prof.)
Figure 2. In July 1924, Albert Einstein sent S. N. Bose a postcard
(left) that accepted Bose's paper on radiation statistics and
acknowledged its importance. (Card from ref. 1; 1920s photo
of Einstein courtesy of AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives.)
NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION
50 October 2006 Physics Today www.physicstoday.org
Bose’s second paper began with a critical review of the
previous derivations of Planck’s law (including those of Pauli
and of Einstein and Ehrenfest) that, according to him, con-
tained unnecessary assumptions. For Bose, the methods of
statistical mechanics alone were sufficient to study the ther-
modynamic equilibrium of radiation and matter, indepen-
dent of any specific mechanism of the elementary processes
on which the energy exchange depended. Bose had obtained
a general relation, which was valid for all special assump-
tions made by the previous authors about the elementary
processes and their probabilities.
Einstein’s reply came a week later, on 3 November:
Most esteemed colleague!
Friendly thanks for your letter of 26.10. I am
happy to have the opportunity to meet you per-
sonally. Your papers have appeared already
some time ago; unfortunately the offprints were
sent to me instead of you. You can have them any
time. I am not in agreement with your elemen-
tary law of probability for the interaction be-
tween radiation and matter, and have given the
reason in a note that appeared together with
your article. To wit, your law is not compatible
with the following two conditions:
1. The coefficient of absorption is independent
of the density of the radiation.
2. The behavior of an oscillator in a radiation
field must result from the statistical laws as a lim-
iting case.
We can discuss this in more detail when you
come here.
With friendly greetings
Yours
Bose took some time to reply to Einstein. He wrote on
27 January from his Paris residence that he saw a way around
the difficulties pointed out by Einstein and that he had for-
mulated his ideas in a third paper to be sent under separate
cover. Bose said he had looked at the radiation field from a
new standpoint by separating the propagation of the quan-
tum of energy from any electromagnetic influence, and that
he felt some such separation was necessary if quantum the-
ory was to be brought in line with general relativity. Bose
never published that third paper, and no trace of it exists in
the Hebrew University’s Albert Einstein Archives. It is re-
grettable that, either because of Einstein’s critical remarks or
because of the advent of new quantum mechanics, Bose’s sec-
ond paper also has received little attention.
Fortunately, Partha Ghose has provided an in-depth
analysis of both the second and third papers.
10
Recalling a
long conversation he had with Bose in December 1973 or Jan-
uary 1974, Ghose told me that Bose had his own approach to
quantum theory based on his views about the interconnect-
edness of spontaneous and induced emissions, the subject
matter of his second and third papers. Bose did not agree
with Einstein’s proposal to treat the two emissions as inde-
pendent physical processes. Stationary states in atoms have
zero widths in both the old and new quantum theories and
therefore have infinite lifetimes. In reality, atoms decay and
jump down to lower energy states with a finite lifetime.
What is the origin of the atomic widths? In Bose’s view,
they are a consequence of the interaction between atom and en-
vironment, as he attempted to show in his second and third pa-
pers. But Einstein did not agree and dismissed his views with
the remark that in a world consisting of a single excited hy-
drogen atom and nothing else, the atom would obviously emit
a photon and come down to its ground state. Bose, who found
the remark to be sharp and cryptic, was disappointed by it sim-
ply because the world does not have only a single hydrogen
atom and, inevitably, every atom does have an environment.
After spending a year in Paris, Bose went to Berlin in Oc-
tober 1925 and on his arrival wrote to Einstein requesting a
visit. The two met, and Einstein introduced Bose to several
prominent physicists, including Fritz Haber, Otto Hahn, Lise
Meitner, and Walter Gordon. It was an exciting time in Berlin,
the beginning of the new quantum mechanics. As Bose de-
scribes in a letter to Jacqueline Eisenmann, a young student
he met while attending Langevin’s lectures at the Collège de
France and who became a lifelong friend,
Everybody (every physicist) seems to be quite ex-
cited in Berlin the way things have been on with
Physics. First, on the 28th October Heisenberg
spoke in the colloquium about his theory, then, in
the last colloquium, there was a long lecture on the
recent hypothesis of the spinning electron (per-
haps you have heard of it). Everybody is quite be-
wildered and there is going to be very soon a dis-
cussion of Schrödingers papers. Einstein seems
quite excited about it; the other day coming from
the colloquium, we found him jumping, in the
same compartment where we were, and forthwith
he began to talk excitedly about the things we have
just heard. He has to admit that it seems a tremen-
dous thing, considering the lot of things which
these new theories correlate and explain, but he is
very much troubled by the unreasonableness of it
all. We were all silent, but he talked almost all the
time, unconscious of the interest and wonder that
he is exciting in the mind of the passengers.
Einstein proposed two problems for Bose to work on:
first, whether the new statistics implied a novel type of in-
teraction between light quanta; and second, how the statis-
tics of light quanta and transition probabilities would look in
the new quantum mechanics. Apparently, Bose made no
progress on either of the problems. Although he made fre-
quent visits to the flat where Einstein lived, no record exists
of their scientific conversations or of their differences con-
cerning Bose’s second and third papers. Bose never refers to
those matters in his rare autobiographical sketches and arti-
cles on Einstein.
Professor in India
Bose had to return to his university in Dacca after his two-
year leave. While abroad, a professorship position had been
Figure 3.
A renaissance
man, S. N. Bose is
seen here playing
esraj. He also
played flute, and
even composed a
raga. (Courtesy of
Falguni Sarkar.)
www.physicstoday.org October 2006 Physics Today 51
announced. He applied for the position with a letter of rec-
ommendation from Einstein that said
The recent works of Mr S. N. Bose, especially his
theory of radiation equilibrium, signify in my
opinion an important and enduring progress of
the physical theory. Also in personal discussion
with Mr Bose, I have got the impression that he
is a man of unusual gift and depth, from whom
science has much to expect. He has also at his
command an extensive knowledge and certain
ability in our science. As university teacher he
will certainly develop a successful and prosper-
ous activity.
Einstein’s letter and those of Langevin and de Broglie
were not enough to make Bose the first choice for the posi-
tion, since he had no formal doctorate degree. A year later,
though, he was appointed to the professorship. Since his
study leave was paid by the university, Bose felt an obliga-
tion to do something in return.
His two-year stay in Europe had been in many ways a
turning point in his career as a teacher. He had realized the
importance of experimental research in the advancement of
science and had spent a year in France getting firsthand ex-
perience working in the laboratories of de Broglie and Curie.
So, on his return he occupied himself with experimental
work, designing and building his own equipment to set up
an x-ray crystallography laboratory. He also became inter-
ested in chemistry; the first two papers he published after his
return were in that field. Scientifically, he devoted himself al-
most exclusively to teaching and to guiding his students’ re-
search. He also held administrative positions as department
head, dean of the Faculty of Science, and provost. He left
Dacca in 1945 and returned to the University of Calcutta as
the Khaira Professor of Physics. He published on a variety of
subjects and disciplines. Then, in 1953–54, within a span of
less than a year, he wrote some five papers, mostly mathe-
matical in nature, on Einstein’s unified theory. After retiring
from active teaching in 1955, Bose continued to live in Cal-
cutta. He was one of the last survivors among the brilliant
young men who had entered the university some 40 years
earlier.
Noted Einstein scholar John Stachel interviewed Eisen-
mann in 1994, and she gave him copies of some letters she
had preserved. The last one Bose wrote was on 10 January
1974, just a month or so before his death:
Dearest Jacqueline,
Perhaps this letter will reach you after the re-
joicings are over after your birthday anniversary.
But you will excuse me this tardiness remem-
bering my failings as an old man who has almost
lost his eye sight—and has to depend upon oth-
ers for almost every little thing. This year the uni-
versity is sponsor to a conference on Statistical
Physics, and they have graciously termed it a
50 yr anniversary of Bose-Statistics. I try to at-
tend their Setting, and a few foreign scientists
have chosen to come so far—
Hope this finds you in the best of health, and
may you be long with us and your dear ones.
Love, Yours Bose
Throughout his life, Bose remained loyal and grateful to
Einstein (figure 4) for his accepting Bose’s short paper and
making it known in the scientific world. He had unbounded
admiration for Einstein’s scientific achievements. Bose called
Einstein the champion of the oppressed Jews and deplored
the anti-Semitism that drove him from his native land. He
wrote to Einstein on 9 December 1945,
11
As one who owes much to you and your guid-
ance in life, I have always been anxious to have
news about you, especially under the new con-
ditions when you are in a new country. Some of
my friends who are more lucky than me, had
chances to visit the States recently, and had the
good fortune of seeing you in your new house. I
am glad to know that you are well, and still take
a lot of interest in India and Indians.
In the 1950s, Bose tried unsuccessfully to obtain a visa to visit
the US and particularly to meet with Einstein.
For most of his life, other than a few instances in infor-
mal discussions, he kept his disagreements with Einstein
secret. But, according to Ghose, Bose did nurse a hurt feeling
for not having had his “Masters” full blessings for some
of his other ideas. In an April 2005 talk delivered at Dhaka
University, Ghose reported that he was privy to some of
those ideas.
On one occasion he [Bose] told me he was going
to confide something in me which I must never
disclose. I admit I am therefore breaking his trust
in making the story public, only because I think
the story must be recorded for the sake of history.
Moreover, I found later on that the essential idea
was already in print as far back as 1931 in a paper
of C. V. Raman and S. Bhagavantam.
12
I now
wonder if Professor Bose knew about this paper
at all, or had clean forgotten about it.
Anyway, he got up and closed all the doors
and windows so that nobody could hear what he
was about to tell me. Then he started to explain
to me in a low voice how in his derivation of
Planck’s formula he got the first factor 4πν
2
/c
3
in-
stead of 8πν
2
/c
3
as required, and that he had pro-
posed in his paper that this [additional] factor of
2 could come from the photon having a spin of
one unit, which could be either parallel or an-
tiparallel to its direction of propagation. But he
said to me in Bengali with a sad smile, “The old
man crossed it out!”
Einstein apparently replaced it by the statement
that this factor came from the two states of polar-
Figure 4. S. N. Bose in 1953. (Courtesy of
Etienne Eisenmann.)
See www.pt.ims.ca/9469-23
52 October 2006 Physics Today
ization of light. There was no need to talk about
the photon spin at that stage, was probably Ein-
stein’s stand. And then he went on to remark with
a dismissive smile, “What on earth can the polar-
ization of a particle mean?” I was shocked. I asked
[Bose] why he had not pointed this out to Einstein
when photon spin was eventually discovered.
Einstein would have surely stood by your prior-
ity, I remonstrated with him. “How does it matter
who discovered it? It’s been found, hasn’t it?” was
his reply, again in Bengali, with a sense of satis-
faction. That was Satyen Bose.
Bose’s achievements in scientific research were not as sus-
tained or as numerous as those of his contemporaries Saha,
Raman, and Kariamanikkam Krishnan. After his great initial
success, Bose fell into the trap of being a perfectionist; he pub-
lished only worthwhile ideas, never kept notes, and lectured
by memory. Many of his ideas ended up in students’ theses.
He was, however, a towering figure in many other ways.
With his love for stimulating conversations, his wide-
ranging interests in all human endeavors, and his intellectual
fervor, he was a source of inspiration for many who were out-
side physics. He was politically active throughout his life and
served on many committees to further the scientific and in-
dustrial development of India after independence. Politically,
the partition of India in 1947 had a profound effect on him.
He felt disillusioned—India was free, but mutilated. He be-
came a fervent Bengali nationalist and, following the lead of
Tagore, he started a crusade of writing and teaching in Ben-
gali. To summarize in the words of Ghose’s Dhaka talk, “Bose
was indeed a unique confluence of intellectual brilliance,
encyclopedic knowledge, selfless dedication to the mother-
land, and unbounded compassion and love for fellow beings.
He was a renaissance figure and a quintessential Bengali.”
I am grateful to Sushanta Dattagupta, director, and V. K. Thomas,
librarian, of the S. N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences in
Kolkata; William Blanpied; Partha Ghose; Falguni Sarkar; Etienne
Eisenmann; and John Stachel. My special thanks to Sauer Tilman for
files from the Albert Einstein Archives of the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem. The online version of this article includes Sarkar’s “Ode to
Grandpa: Tribute to S. N. Bose.”
References
1. The Bose and Einstein letters presented in this article are dis-
cussed in C. K. Majumdar et al., eds., S. N. Bose: The Man and His
Work, Part II: Life, Lectures and Addresses, Miscellaneous Pieces,
S. N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences, Calcutta, India
(1994), chaps. 4–6.
2. S. N. Bose, Z. Phys. 26, 168 (1924).
3. A. Pais, “Subtle Is the Lord . . .”: The Science and Life of Albert Ein-
stein, Oxford U. Press, New York (1982), p. 425.
4. See also L. Natanson, Physikalische Zeitschrift 12, 659 (1911).
5. Their first two papers were S. N. Bose, M. N. Saha, Philos. Mag.
36, 199 (1918); Philos. Mag. Ser. 6, 456 (1920).
6. Ref. 1, p. 246–7.
7. M. N. Saha, S. N. Bose, The Principle of Relativity; Original Papers
by A. Einstein and H. Minkowski, tr. into English by M. N. Saha and
S. N. Bose, with a Historical Introduction by P. C. Mahalanobis,
U. Calcutta, India (1920).
8. W. A. Blanpied, Am. J. Phys. 40, 1212 (1972). For a conflicting
account of when the paper was completed, see J. Stachel, Ein-
stein from “B” to “Z,” Birkhäuser, Boston (2002), p. 523.
9. Ref. 1, p. 290.
10. P. Ghose, in S. N. Bose: The Man and His Works, Part I: Collected
Scientific Papers, C. K. Majumdar et al., eds., S. N. Bose National
Centre for Basic Sciences, Calcutta, India (1994), p. 57.
11. Doc. 6-134, Einstein Archives, Hebrew U. of Jerusalem, Israel.
12. C. V. Raman, S. Bhagavantam, Ind. J. Phys. 6, 355 (1931).
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The Man and His Work
  • S N Bose
The Bose and Einstein letters presented in this article are discussed in C. K. Majumdar et al., eds., S. N. Bose: The Man and His Work, Part II: Life, Lectures and Addresses, Miscellaneous Pieces, S. N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences, Calcutta, India (1994), chaps. 4-6.
The Principle of Relativity; Original Papers by A. Einstein and H. Minkowski, tr
  • M N Saha
  • S N Bose
M. N. Saha, S. N. Bose, The Principle of Relativity; Original Papers by A. Einstein and H. Minkowski, tr. into English by M. N. Saha and S. N. Bose, with a Historical Introduction by P. C. Mahalanobis, U. Calcutta, India (1920).
For a conflicting account of when the paper was completed, see J. Stachel, Einstein from "B" to "Z
  • W A Blanpied
W. A. Blanpied, Am. J. Phys. 40, 1212 (1972). For a conflicting account of when the paper was completed, see J. Stachel, Einstein from "B" to "Z," Birkhäuser, Boston (2002), p. 523.
The Man and His Works, Part I: Collected Scientific Papers
  • P Ghose
  • S N Bose
P. Ghose, in S. N. Bose: The Man and His Works, Part I: Collected Scientific Papers, C. K. Majumdar et al., eds., S. N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences, Calcutta, India (1994), p. 57.