麻豆APP

Image by Satyendra Nath Bose from

Top 10 Unbelievable Facts about Satyendra Nath Bose

He was a famous Indian physicist who worked with Albert Einstein on the Bose-Einstein Condensate and the Boson particle.

Satyendra Nath Bose FRS was an Indian mathematician and physicist specialising in theoretical physics.

Bose, a graduate of the University of Calcutta, taught at the University of Dhaka (1921鈥�45) and then at Calcutta (1945鈥�56).

Bose鈥檚 numerous scientific papers (published from 1918 to 1956) contributed to statistical mechanics, the electromagnetic properties of the ionosphere, the theories of X-ray crystallography and thermoluminescence and unified field theory.

叠辞蝉别鈥檚&苍产蝉辫;Planck鈥檚 Law and the Hypothesis of Light Quanta (1924) led Einstein to seek him out for him and work with him.

Here are 10 unbelievable facts about Satyendra Nath Bose.

1. Satyendra Nath Bose is the Father of the ‘God Particle’

Image from

In one of his classes at Dhaka, Bose was giving lectures on the theory of radiation and ultraviolet catastrophe where he found something unusual about the results it predicted.

So, he replaced Boltzmann鈥檚 classical statistics with his own and later found satisfying results on his own.

In June 1924, Bose sent this paper to Einstein with the title鈥� Plank鈥檚 law and the Hypothesis of Light Quanta鈥� asking him to translate it into German and publish it.

Einstein recognised the value and importance of his paper and published it in the same journal mentioned earlier.

Later, Einstein replied to him as an important step forward for his glorious work on the paper.

Einstein adopted his idea and applied it to the atoms that led to the existence of Bose-Einstein condensate.

Bose-Einstein condensate is a dense collection of bosons (a class of elementary sub-atomic particles named after Bose).

2. He Worked with Luminaries Albert Einstein and Marie Currie

Image by Caiguanhao from

When Bose was in Dhaka University, he wrote a paper in 1924, in which he derived Plank鈥檚 quantum radiation law without referencing classical physics.

He was able to do so by counting states with identical properties.

He sent this paper to Albert Einstein in Germany who immediately recognized its importance, translated it into German and submitted it on Bose鈥檚 behalf to the Zeitschrift f眉r Physik, the prestigious scientific journal.

Bose went to Europe to work for two years at X-ray and crystallography laboratories where he worked alongside the big names of science including Albert Einstein and Marie Curie.

3. Satyendra Nath Bose was Never awarded the Nobel Prize

Although  7 Nobel Prizes have been awarded for research related to the concepts of the Bosons and the Bose-Einstein Condensate but Bose was never awarded a Nobel Prize.

 K Banerji, D.S. Kothari, S.N. Bagchi and AK Dutta nominated Satyendra Bose for the Nobel Prize in Physics, for his contribution to the unified field theory and Bose-Einstein statistics.

It is to be known that when the physicist was asked about not receiving the Nobel Prize, he replied, “I have got all the recognition I deserve”.

 Nobel Committee expert  Oskar Klein did see his work as worthy of a Nobel Prize.

4. S.N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences 

Image by Biswarup Ganguly from

12 years after Bose鈥檚 death, the Indian Parliament established the S.N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences in Salt Lake, Calcutta.

The Centre for Basic Sciences is an Autonomous Research Institute. 

 Professor S. N. Bose was a  theoretical physicist who made the most fundamental contributions to Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Statistics.

Since its inception in 1986, the Centre has emerged as a major institution for research and development in Basic Sciences, specifically in the area of physical sciences and related disciplines.

The Centre, while focusing on basic research, has also made a new move to contribute to application-driven basic research, in particular, in areas of national needs.

5. Satyendra Nath Bose Awards and Achievements

The Government of India bestowed upon him the title of Padma Vibhushan in 1954 for his services to science and research. 

Later, at the age of 65, he was appointed a National Professor which is the highest honour for a scholar.

He was a Fellow of the Royal Society.

S.N. Bose served as President of the National Institute of Science, the Indian Statistical Institute and the Indian Physical Society.

He was also made the General President of the Indian Science Congress.

6. S.N. Bose鈥檚 Academic Life is Stuff of Myth

Image from

Amitabha Bhattacharya wrote an article reminiscing his time as a student in the turbulent 1960s in Calcutta.

Satyendra Nath Bose’s genius was the subject of many stories some real and some coloured. 

It was alleged that a teacher in his school awarded him 110 out of 100 in a paper and thought he would one day join the ranks of Karl Friedrich Gauss as a mathematician.

It was said that when Niels Bohr got stuck with a problem during his lecture in Calcutta Bose instantly resolved it.

Furthermore, stories were said of students earning their PhDs based on scraps from his wastepaper basket!

7. Einstein’s Recommendation helped him Become a Professor

After graduating from Calcutta university  Bose joined the newly established physics department of the university as a research scholar and lecturer (1917).

He then moved to the new University of Dacca (now Dhaka, in Bangladesh) as a Reader in 1921.

Since he had not done a doctorate, Einstein鈥檚 recommendation helped him become a professor and head of the department.

 He served as the Dean of the Faculty of Science at Dhaka University until 1945  when he returned to Calcutta University.

Prof. Bose taught at the University of Calcutta till 1956 where he encouraged the students to design their own equipment.

8. S.N. Bose was an Avid Researcher in varied Fields 

Bose was not an institution builder like Saha, Homi Bhabha, Mahalanobis or Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar.

He was a professor all his life with profound interests in different branches of science, mathematics and statistics, literature, language and music.

Even after his retirement, he continued with his research in nuclear physics.

Along with physics, he also researched organic chemistry, geology, engineering,  anthropology and literature (both English and Bengali.)

He could speak Bengali, English, French, German and Sanskrit.

9. Satyendra Bose Advocated for use of Mother Tongue in Teaching Science

Image by AshLin from

Bose was an advocate for using mother tongue for the instruction of science even at the post-graduate and research levels.

His zeal to popularise science through the vernacular medium made him establish Bangiya Bijnan 麻豆APPhad and start the science magazine Jnan o Bijnan (1948), perhaps the first in a vernacular language in India.

鈥淗e used to work out detailed and distinctly written out steps of calculations on sheets of paper with meticulous care when he gave us courses on X-ray crystallography in our mother tongue Bengali 鈥� in a branch of physics which was not even his main field of interest.鈥�

10. Bose and Saha Translated Einstein’s  Relativity Papers to English

Satyendra Nath Bose (Speaking), Ronald Aylmer Fisher (Right) and Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis (Left) Image from

While studying at the University of Calcutta, Bose also served as a lecturer in the physics department.

In 1919, he and Saha prepared the first English-language book based on German and French translations of Albert Einstein’s original special and general relativity papers.

The pair continued to present papers on theoretical physics and pure mathematics for several years following.

His love for science was so much more than these. His contribution to quantum statistics led the world to see with a new vision and he kept contributing till his last breath.