Portrays Bose sitting with the crescograph instrument.
Google has come up with a doodle to celebrate the 158th birthday of Jagadish Chandra Bose, one of the greatest scientists ever, who made immense contribution to the fields of physics and biology.
The doodle is seen in several countries, including the United States, France, Japan, and India. It portrays Bose sitting with the crescograph instrument he invented to measure plant growth and movement.
Born on November 30, 1858, in Munshiganj, Bengal Presidency of British India (now in Bangladesh), Bose was a Bengali polymath, physicist, biologist, biophysicist, botanist and an early writer of science fiction. Though he was not allowed to use science labs under the British rule, his contributions have led to several discoveries later on.
Bose was one of the pioneers of radio and microwave communication. In November 1895, at a public demonstration at Town Hall of Kolkata, Bose ignited gunpowder and rang a bell at a distance of about 75 feet using millimeter range wavelength microwaves. Bose’s first scientific paper, “On polarization of electric rays by double-refracting crystals” was communicated to the Asiatic Society of Bengal in May 1895.
Mercury Coherer, a radio wave receiver invented by Bose was used by Guglielmo Marconi in the breakthroughs discovery of an operational two-way radio that was capable of communicating across 2,000 miles. Bose’s work in radio microwave optics was specifically directed towards studying the nature of the phenomenon and was not an attempt to develop radio into a communication medium.
Bose’s experiments in the field of biophysics proved that plants can feel pain and understand affection like human beings. From the analysis of the variation of the cell membrane potential of plants under different circumstances, he hypothesized that plants can “feel pain, understand affection etc.”
Bose could be considered as the pioneer of Bengali science fiction writers. In 1896, he published the novel Niruddesher Kahini (Story of the Untraceable) which tells how a bottle of hair oil could be used to divert a cyclone. Later, it was translated into English.