Satyendranath Bose was an eminent scientist of modern India. He was born on 1st January 1894 in Kolkata. His Father, Surendranath Bose was an accountant in railways. Bose studied in Hindu School in Kolkata. His mathematics teacher once gave Satyen 110 marks out of 100 in a test examination. It is because Satyen did not skip any of the alternatives. The teacher predicted that one day Satyen would be a great mathematician like Laplace or Cauchy. He passed Entrance Examination in 1909 keeping fifth position in the State. Then be entered the Presidency College for intermediate. Some of the future renowned scientists such as Meghanad Saha, Nikhil Ranjan Sen, J. C. Ghosh, J. N. Mukherjee and Girija Pati Bhattacharya were his class mates. Eminent scientists like P. C. Ray, Jagadis Chandra Bose and S. N. Maitra were his teachers.

Satyendranath Bose passed intermediate examination in 1911 with first position in the State. Meghanad Saha was second and Nikhil Ranjan Sen was third. Bose then joined B. A. class in the Presidency College and passed B. A. in 1913 with first position in the State. This time also Saha was second and Nikhil was third. They all joined in M. A. class in the college. Bose passed in 1915 with the first rank in the examination, with Saha in second position.

Sir Asutosh Mukherjee established University College of Science in Kolkata in 1916.   S. N. Bose and M. N. Saha were appointed as lecturers in the college. Both tried to introduce modern physics in the curriculum of studies. Einstein’s relativity theory was the foremost of science at that time. Bose and Saha studied this. They translated the relativity theory from German to English and it was published by Calcutta University.

After his stint at the Calcutta University for five years, he joined the Dacca University in 1921 as a reader in Physics. Prof. D. M. Bose of Calcutta University had gone to Europe and while returning from Berlin, he had brought with him new publications on quantum theory. He gave Max Plank’s Thermodynamik und Warmestrahlung (Thermodynamics and Heat) to Satyendranath to read. The book contained all the original papers of Plank. Plank was a great physicist and discoverer of quantum theory. There are many equations and formulae in the book. Bose started solving these himself. At one place he found that Plank had assumed some hypothesis and derived an equation based on the same. He derived the equation in a better way. Bose wrote a four-page paper, ‘Plank’s Law and Light quantum Hypothesis’. He sent it to an Indian journal and to some journals abroad. But nobody published it. Then Bose sent the paper to Einstein in 1924 for his comments with a request that if he liked it he could translate it to German and help publish in a journal there. Einstein was impressed with the paper. He translated it into German and sent it to a German journal Zeitschrift fuer Physik for publication. The paper was published in its August 1924 issue. Einstein had highly praised the paper and had added a comment to it. 

In this outstanding paper, Bose had mentioned that light particle photon obeys some statistics. Later, Einstein further studied on this and found that not only photon, but some other particles also obey this statistics. He listed such particles. Now the particular field of Bose’s research has come to be known as ‘Bose- Einstein Statistics’. Elementary particles that obey this statistics are called ‘Bosons’ in his honour. Thus Satyendranath Bose has earned a permanent name in science.

Bose sailed for Europe in September 1924 for a study tour of two years. He worked with Marie Curie and other great scientists in Paris. Then he went to Berlin and had a long-cherished meeting with Einstein. During his stay in Berlin, he came in contact with such towering figures of the modern science as Fritz Haber, Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner, Walter Bothe, Hans Geiger, Peter Debye, Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg etc., many of whom were to receive Nobel Prize. He returned to Dacca in 1927 and was appointed Professor of Physics in Dacca University. He worked there till 1945.

Bose returned to the Calcutta University in 1945 as Khaira Professor of Physics. He retired from Calcutta University in 1956 and became the Vice Chancellor of the Visvabharati University at Shantiniketan from 1956 to 1958.

Bose was a popularizer of science. Once while attending an international seminar on science in Japan, he found that most of the proceedings were carried out in Japanese language. He visited some schools and colleges and found that science was being taught in Japanese language. On returning to India, he advocated for teaching science in mother tongue. For popularizing science in Bengali, he had founded one organization ‘Bangiya Bijnan Parishad’ and the organization published one science magazine ‘Jnan O Bijnan’ in Bengali.

For his achievements, Bose was conferred with the “Padma Vibhusan’ award by the government of India in 1954. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society, London in 1958. As a great scholar, he was nominated to the Rajya Sabha by the President of India. In 1959, he was appointed as National Professor by Government of India, the highest honour which the nation could confer upon a scholar.

Satyendranath Bose died in Kolkata on 4 February 1974 at the age of 80.