Bose protested the latter by refusing salary checks – after three years his protest worked and he got his full salary retroactively – and worked around the former by converting a tiny cubicle next to a restroom into a lab. But in those 24 square feet, equipped with instruments of his own design and paid for at his expense, Bose would work wonders and begin to engineer the embryonic field of radio.Īt around the time Bose joined Presidency College, Heinrich Hertz was confirming the existence of electromagnetic waves, postulated by James Clerk Maxwell in the 1860s. Sadly, the administration found ways to even the score, chiefly by not providing Bose with any laboratory space, but also by offering him only 100 rupees a month salary, half of what an Indian professor would normally make, and only a third of an Englishman’s salary. One did not refuse a viceroy’s request, and despite protests by the college administration, Bose was appointed professor of physics. Instead, Bose returned with a collection of degrees in multiple disciplines and a letter of introduction that prompted the Viceroy of India to request an appointment for him at Presidency College in Kolkata (Calcutta). Originally sent there to study medicine, Bose had withdrawn due to ill-health exacerbated by the disagreeable aroma of the dissection rooms. In 1885, a 27-year old Jagadish Chandra Bose returned to his native India from England, where he had been studying natural science at Cambridge.
But another conflict was brewing at the turn of 19th century, this time between an Indian polymath and an Italian nobleman, and it would determine who got credit for laying the foundations for the key technology of the 20th century – radio.Īppointment and Disappointment Jagadish Chandra Bose We’ve all heard of the epic battles between Edison and Tesla and Westinghouse, and even with the benefit of more than a century of hindsight it’s hard to tell who did what to whom. While academics were busy uncovering the mysteries of electromagnetism, bands of entrepreneurs were waiting to pounce on the pure science and engineer solutions to problems that didn’t even exist yet, but could no doubt turn into profitable ventures. The early days of electricity appear to have been a cutthroat time.
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