Do you know who discovered oxygen? Even though you know oxygen is all around you and that you will die without it, you probably would have died without ever knowing who discovered it. That's because no one bothered to name the gas 'Scheelgen' after the Swedish pharmacist Scheele, who is widely credited with its discovery. (The credit is usually shared between the Swedish pharmacist Carl Wilhelm Scheele, and the British clergyman Joseph Priestly.)
However, with a week which passed by, in which the world media was inflated with Higg's Boson, you are more likely to know the Scottish professor who predicted the existence of the 'God particle' which was named after him and that Boson itself is named after Satyendranath Bose of India, who predicted, nearly a century back, the existence of a group of sub atomic particles called Bosons.
While much of the media focus itself was on the 'God particle,' very little has been mentioned about the work of Satyendranath Bose, which had far reaching implications on the advancement of particle physics which has lead up to the investigation to find the Higg's Boson. If Bose hadn't postulated on this group of sub atomic particles, we might have been, in all possibility still a long way from finding the God particle.
Was Satyendranath Bose Merely Lucky to Have the Bosons Named After Him?
Though India and the Indian government had recognized his greatness by awarding him various honours and positions while he was alive when the Nobel committee itself had failed to acknowledge it, Bose remained a forgotten name, unknown to the new generation Indians and to the world at large, until the discovery of the God particle, announced last week.
In fact, after his death in 1974, the Indians and most of the world outside scientific community weren't aware of his contribution or achievement. A couple of generations have never heard of him. This was mainly due to the very esoteric nature of his work and contributions to science, which not everyone can understand.
It took a genius like Albert Einstein to recognize the genius in Bose and eventually jointly produce scientific contributions like Bose-Einstein condensate in particle physics. Perhaps the most important of all work of Satyendranath Bose is his short paper with statistical postulations on Max Planck's quantum mechanics, which Einstein recognized as explaining a gaping hole in the theory and which predicted the existence of sub atomic particles called Bosons, later named after him, in recognition.
Respected Sir, I have ventured to send you the accompanying article for your perusal and opinion. You will see that I have tried to deduce the coefficient ... in Planck's law independent of classical electrodynamics.
What makes Satyendranath Bose the greatest scientist India has produced is his mathematical prowess, a record not broken in the University of Kolkota where he did most of his work, which he applied to postulate his theories about the nature of a set of sub atomic particles, no one had ever seen, until after several years. His greatness, like that of Einstein and many other eminent scientists of the past, lies in the fact that most of his work was done in his own god given faculties, in a world which had no computers, software or internet, and in a country far away from Europe, where the mainstream scientific advancement was taking place.
Part of the reasons, other than the implicit difficulty to explain his work to the people, why Bose was not universally recognized or given a Nobel Prize might have been his nationality, like in the case of Mahatma Gandhi, who was never awarded the prestigious price.
Not that Satyendranath Bose and his work would have gone in to oblivion even if the Bosons weren't named after him or no one really would have searched and found the God particle. His work was undoubtedly a corner stone of modern physics and one way or the other, if not now sometime in the future would have revealed and shown itself as future scientists would have strived for answers to the secrets of the universe.
Now that God particle has reinvented his greatness for the world, it has become all the more important that a modern and emerging India do everything to unearth the greatness and increase the awareness of its immortal scientist to instil ambition and purpose in its youth and future generations. That only can atone a grate scientist who had the misfortune of being born an the wrong place at the wrong time.
A thousand years from now, like oxygen, Bosons will still be around reminding everyone about Satyendranath Bose and his contribution to science, while Professor Higgs, credited with the prediction of Higg's Boson itself, the God particle everyone went gaga about, might be forgotten as it will be broken down, dissected and analyzed, extending the frontiers of human knowledge.
But that is not why Bose will be remembered. His name will stand out because, if greatness is to be judged by the contribution to the advancement of scientific knowledge, Satyendranath Bose is undoubtedly, the greatest scientists India has produced in recent times.
Follow Sreedhar Pillai on Twitter: www.twitter.com/lastingrose
You are to be commended for writing and article about Bose, an extremely important physicist. However, (as a professor of subatomic particle physics) there is a lot in your article that is misleading at best, about the science. Bose did not have anything to do with "predicting" an entire class subatomic particles. He established a class of statistics in quantum mechanics. The other class of statistics in quantum mechanics was developed by Fermi. Later, without any prediction by Bose, when subatomic particle physics was starting to understand the nature of fundamental particles, we found some that were in the class of fermions and some that were in the class of bosons and called them such.
The Higgs (note: not Higg's) boson really doesn't owe that much to Bose. Attaching too much of a link would be analogous to saying that the person who established that a tower is a class of building deserves credit for the Eiffel Tower.
The Bose-Einstein condensate is not a significant concept in "particle physics"; rather it's condensed matter physics where this is important. We call it Bose-Einstein because of their contributions this idea. It's not the case that only Einstein recognized Bose's genius. This implies that other physicists weren't insightful enough about Bose's work. Bose-Einstein is not to be interpreted as an endorsement of Bose by Einstein. The fact we call it Bose statistics in quantum mechanics -- very fundamental -- indicates that physicists all recognize Bose's most important work.
Thank you for enlightening me. Perhaps the Large Hadron Particle Accelerator should have another name added to it's title.
Humbly,
Greg Fiedorow
Knox College -1989
Humbly,
Greg Fiedorow
Knox College - 1989
Thanks for reading the article and for your comment.
I have merely tried to figure out what Satyendranath Bose has done and what was his role in the whole saga of God Particle. I have discovered that his work is of immense importance in the advancement of quantum physics and in the search for the secrets of the universe. By his sheer mathematical genius he postulated statistical arguments validating quantum theory to prove that particles of one energy state can exist in the same space which lead to the conclusion that God particle indeed may be one of those particles.
As a matter of fact, there can be no greater recognition for Bose and his greatness than the one conferred upon him by fellow scientist Albert Einstein. The work of Bose is a great contribution to the humanity and not just for his country of birth.