Dr. Jagadish Chandra Bose a Plant lover and Modern Scientist is a True Inspiration
"Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is
a gift of God, which is why we call it the present." — Bil Keane
Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose: When many of us do not think about our co
living beings there was a great Indian scientist who started thinking about
plants. He discovered that animals and plants have feelings that are common in
both. Is it not amazing and inspiring? He discovered that plants are sensitive
to heat, cold, light, noise and various other external stimuli. Sir Bose
invented a special equipment called
Cresco graph with which he recorded stimuli
of plants for various situations and recorded their responses. The instrument was
capable of magnifying the motion of plant tissues to about 10,000 times of
their actual size and used it to prove the similarities between plants and
other living organisms.
To prove his theory JC Bose
conducted a open conference with scientists in the central hall of the Royal
Society in London May 10, 1901. To prove his theory
that plants have feelings like humans to enthusiastic scientists Bose chose a
plant and dipped the plant unto its stem into vessel filled with bromide
solution, a poisonous solution. He used his Cresco graph instrument to amplify
the plant under experiment and focussed the amplified findings on the screen.
Scientists were surprised to see the violent moment of the spot exposed similar
to a pendulum. The vibrant movements came to a sudden stop like a dead rat
exposed to poison. The plant had died due to the exposure to the poisonous
bromide solution.
Though majority of the scientists
appreciated the experiment, few did not agree with Bose theory. Bose did not
give up and continued his findings with many more experiments using the
Crescograph, and recording the response of the plants to fertilizers, light
rays and wireless waves. The instrument received widespread acclaim,
particularly from the Path Congress of Science in 1900. Many physiologists also
supported his findings later on, using more advanced instruments.
Jagdish Chandra Bose was born on November 30th, 1858, in Bikrampur, Bengal and educated
in Faridpur, India.
He was the son of a Bhagawan Chandra
Bose, magistrate. Bose in the company of village folk at school developed
interest in nature and animals leading to invention of plant biology or botany.
Bose wrote a science fiction in Bengal language called ‘Polatok Tufan’. It is a story where a bottle of hair oil is the hero that could control and stop cyclone. He explains the feature with the fact that oil stills the surface of water by changing surface tension.
If we consider Bose as the first pillar of modern India, we should allow the other three prominent people of his time Prafulla Chandra Ray (1861-1944), who is a chemist and established an Indian school of chemistry and a chemical industry, Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887- 1920), the great mathematician and Rabindranath Tagore , a great religious guru, philosopher and friend to JC Bose.
References:
http://www.humantouchofchemistry.com/jagdish-chandra-bose.htm
http://www.vigyanprasar.gov.in/scientists/JCBOSE.htm
http://www.simplydecoded.com/2013/11/30/jc-bose-the-first-modern-scientist-of-india/