Jagadish Chandra Bose Quotes

He (Bose) was modern India’s first physicist after all, one of her very first scientists. He was his motherland’s first active participant in the Galilean - Newtonian tradition. He had confounded the British disbeliever. He had shown that the Eastern mind was indeed capable of the exact and exacting thinking demanded by western science. He had broken the mould.

Then afterwards, when victory is yours, we too-all of us Bengalis-will share in the honour and the glory. We do not need to understand what is it that you have done. Or to have given you any thought, time or money, but the moment we hear the chorus or praises in The Times from the lips of the Englishmen we shall lap it up. Some important news papers in our country will observe we are not inferior men; and another paper will observe we are making discovery after discovery in science. Earlier we shall not have felt an iota of responsibility towards you, but when victory has been won and you return home bearing a crop of records, then you will be one of us. Soughing and ploughing you will do alone; reaping we shall do together. The victory you will find will be more ours than yours.

From his (Karna’s) low caste came rejection, came every disadvantage; but he always played and fought fair! So his life, though a series of disappointments and defeats to the very end – his slaying by Arjuna– appealed to me as a boy as the greatest of triumphs. I still think of the tournament where Arjuna had been victor, and then of Karna coming as a stranger to challenge him. Questioned of name and birth, he replies, “I am my own ancestor! You do not ask the might Ganges from which of its many springs it comes: its own flow justifies itself, so shall my deeds me! [Further he wrote :] Like that of my boyhood’s hero Karna, my life has been ever one of combat and must be to the last. It is not for man to complain of circumstances, but bravely to accept, to confront, and to dominate them.

Nothing can be more vulgar or more untrue than the ignorant assertion that the world owes its progress of knowledge of any particular race. The whole world is interdependent and a constant stream of thought has throughout ages enriched the common heritage of mankind. It is the realization of this mutual interdependence that has kept the mighty fabric bound together and ensured the continuity of permanence of civilization.

Not in matter but in thought, not in possessions nor even in attainments but in ideals, is to be found the seed of immortality. Not through material acquisition but in generous diffusion of ideas and ideals can the true empire of humanity be established. Thus to Asoka, to whom belonged this vast empire, bound by the inviolate seas, after he had tried to ransom the world by giving away to the utmost, there came a time when he had nothing more to give, except one half of an Amlaki fruit. This was his last possession, and his anguished cry was that since he had nothing more to give, let the half of the Amlaki be accepted as his final gift.

They would be our worst enemy who would wish us to live only on the glories of the past and die off from the face of the earth in sheer passivity. By continuous achievement alone we can justify our great ancestry. We do not honour our ancestors by the false claim that they are omniscient and had nothing more to learn.

Sir J.C. Bose's pioneering works in quasi-optic millimeter wave research in Calcutta, India about 100 years back during 1890s are highlighted. He developed an elegant millimeter wave spark transmitter, self recovering coherer detector, wire grid polariser, cylindrical diffraction grating, dielectric lens and prism, rectangular waveguide, horn antenna and microwave absorber, for the studies of reflection, refraction, absorption and polarisation of millimeter waves and its application to wireless remote control for firing a gun. All these pioneering activities indicate that he was well ahead of his time and prompted us to call him the "Father of Radio Science".

The unique throb of life in all creation could seem only poetic imagery before your advent, Professor! A saint I once knew would never pluck flowers. 'Shall I rob the rosebush of its pride in beauty? Shall I cruelly affront its dignity by my rude divestment?' His sympathetic words are verified literally through your discoveries!"

O Hermit, call thou in the authentic words Of that old hymn called Sama; "Rise! Awake! Call to the man who boasts his shastric lore
From vain pedantic wranglings profitless,
Call to that foolish braggart to come forth
Out on the face of nature, this broad earth,
Send forth this call unto thy scholar band;
Together round thy sacrifice of fire
Let them all gather. So may our India,
Our ancient land unto herself return
O once again return to steadfast work,
To duty and devotion, to her trance
Of earnest meditation; let her sit
Once more unruffled, greedless, strifeless, pure,
O once again upon her lofty seat
And platform, teacher of all lands.

The poet is intimate with truth, while the scientist approaches awkwardly. Come someday to my laboratory and see the unequivocable testimony of the crescograph.

His model of an electric eye which records with electric signals message received from outside world, his physical model of memory as a mechanism for storing information justified this being considered a precursor of the modern discipline of cybernetics.

Ashoka’s emblem of the Amlaki will be seen on the cornices of the Institute, and towering above all is the symbol of thunderbolt. It was the RishiDadhichi, the pure and blameless, who offered his life that the divine weapon, the thunderbolt, might be fashioned out of his bones to smite evil and exalt righteousness. It is but half of the Amlaki that we can offer now. But the past shall be reborn in a yet nobler future. We stand here today and resume work tomorrow, so that by the efforts of our lives and our unshaken faith in the future we may all help to build the greater India yet to be.

The true laboratory is the mind, where behind illusions we uncover the laws of truth.

The generally accepted interpretation of Jagadish Chandra’s scientific activities is that he had essentially the biologist’s conception of Nature; lack of opportunities for biological studies while as a student in Calcutta and later lack of any teaching post in biology, induced Jagadish Chandra to take up the post of teacher in physics.

[Science] was a human heritage] belonging neither to the East or the West.