Satyendra Nath Bose Satyendra Nath Bose Satyendra Nath Bose Satyendra Nath Bose Satyendra Nath Bose (1894 – 1974) was an Indian physicist fromthe state of West Bengal. He is best known for his work onquantum mechanics, providing foundation for Bose-Einsteinstatistics and the theory of the Bose-Einstein condensate. He isstatistics and the theory of the Bose-Einstein condensate. He ishonored as the namesake of the bosons.

S.N. Bose was born in Calcutta and was a student of outstandingmerit. He joined the Presidency College of Calcutta andmerit. He joined the Presidency College of Calcutta andgraduated in 1911 at the top of his class. He stood first in order ofmerit in both the graduate and post-graduate degreeexaminations in mathematics.

Satyendra Nath Bose

He came in contact with teachers such as Jagadish Chandra Bose and Prafulla ChandraRoy, a distinguished chemist, who provided him inspiration to aim high in life.

From 1916 to 1921 he was a lecturer in the newly created College of Science at Calcutta

Satyendra Nath Bose

From 1916 to 1921 he was a lecturer in the newly created College of Science at CalcuttaUniversity. In 1921, he joined the Department of Physics of the then recently foundedDhaka University (now in Bangladesh and called University of Dhaka) as a reader. In1958, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society.

In 1924, inspired by a discussion with his friend and colleague Meghnad Saha, S.N. Bosedeveloped a logically satisfactory derivation based entirelyon Albert Einstein’s photon concept. Bose sent his paperto the philosophical magazine but to his disappointmentto the philosophical magazine but to his disappointmentthe paper was turned down. Then he decided to send thepaper directly to Einstein with a request to arrange itspublication in Zeitschrift für Physic.

Einstein himself translated Bose’s paper into German. Thepaper was published in August 1924 under the headingPlancksgesetz Lichtquantenhypothese (its English title

was Plank’s Law and Light Quantum Hypothesis) with the following comment from

S.N Bose and Sir Albert Einstein

was Plank’s Law and Light Quantum Hypothesis) with the following comment fromEinstein: “Bose’s derivative of Plank’s formula appears to me to be an importantstep forward. The method used here gives also the quantum theory of an ideal gas,as I shall show elsewhere.” This is how Bose-Einstein statistics was born.

Einstein adopted Bose’s idea and extended it to atoms. This led to the prediction of theexistence of a phenomena which became known as Bose-Einstein condensate – adense collection of bosons (particles with integer spins), that was proven to exist byexperiments. In 1995, scientists Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman at University of Colorado,experiments. In 1995, scientists Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman at University of Colorado,chilled a cloud of rubidium atoms in the laboratory to temperature barely above absolutezero (170 nK), and created a type of matter that had eluded scientists ever since itspotential existence was postulated seventy years ago.

Cornell, Wieman, and Wolfgang Ketterle were awardedCornell, Wieman, and Wolfgang Ketterle were awardedthe 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics, for theirachievements.

Nobel Prizes were awarded for research related to theNobel Prizes were awarded for research related to theconcepts of the boson, Bose-Einstein statistics and theBose-Einstein condensate in the years 1996 and 1997.

Bose-Einstein Condensate