Google Doodle celebrates physicist and mathematician Satyendra Nath Bose
Google is paying a tribute to Satyendra Nath Bose today with a Google Doodle. On this day back in 1924, Bose sent his quantum formulations to Albert Einstein who recognized it as a significant discovery in quantum mechanics. Recall the word boson? They are a class of particles that obey Bose statistics and was named after Bose.
Bose's early life
Born In 1894 in Kolkata, Bose was interested in several fields including physics, mathematics, philosophy, biology, arts, and music. After attending Hindu School, he studied at the Presidency College. Inspired by Jagadish Chandra Bose and Prafulla Chandra Ray, Bose worked as a lecturer in the physics department of the University of Calcutta for a few years. In 1954, he was awarded the Padma Vibhushan.
Einstein as mentor
It is believed that Bose considered Albert Einstein as his mentor. While lecturing at the University of Dhaka, Bose wanted to show his students that the contemporary theory on radiation and the ultraviolet catastrophe was insufficient. He adapted this lecture into an article called "Planck's Law and the Hypothesis of Light Quanta" and sent it to Albert Einstein with a letter.
Bose-Einstein condensate
Einstein agreed with Bose's theory, translated his papers into German, and had it published in Zeitschrift für Physik under Bose's name, in 1924. Einstein later adopted the idea and extended it to atoms which eventually predicted the existence of the phenomena which came to be known as Bose-Einstein condensate. It is a dense collection of bosons, demonstrated to exist by an experiment in 1995.
Other achievements of Bose
Bose was also appointed as National Professor, the highest honor in India for scholars. With Einstein's recommendation, Bose was made Head of the Department of Physics at Dhaka University. He served as president of many scientific institutions, namely the National Institute of Science, Indian Physical Society, Indian Statistical Institute, and the Indian Science Congress, Bose also advised the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research.
