Bose Institute

The centenary celebrations of Bose Institute in Kolkata (http://www.boseinst.ernet.in/) concluded on November 29, 2017.Bose Institute occupies a unique and exalted position in the landscape of Indian science. This was one of the earliest scientific institutes to be established in the country. It had served the cause of science and served the cause of India, he noted.

Inspired by lofty nationalistic ideals, Acharya Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858 - 1937), the father of modern science in the Indian subcontinent, founded Bose Institute and dedicated it to the service of the nation on November 30'th, 1917, while delivering his famous speech "The voice of life". Rabindranath Tagore who was then visiting USA, composed the soul-stirring "Matrimondiropunyaangono" for the occasion.

The Institute was founded "not merely a laboratory but a temple", with its principal aims being the advancement of science and diffusion of knowledge. Bose Institute is Asia's first modern research centre devoted to interdisciplinary research. Since inception, the Institute has been visited by numerous stalwarts, such as writers like Aldous Huxley (1926) and heads of foreign states like President Brezhnev of USSR (1959).

Over the decades, Nobel laureates from many countries like Neils Bohr, Paul Crutzen, Richard Ernst, Sir Anthony Leggett, Harald zurHausen, Sir Richard Roberts etc. have visited the Institute. Ever since the establishment of the Dept. of Science and Technology (DST), Govt. of India in May 1971, Bose Institute has been an autonomous grant-in-aid institution of DST.

Following is a brief list of the selected scientific achievements of the Institute:
Debendra Mohan Bose and his co-workers made globally recognised contributions in cosmic rays including the first recording of pi-meson tracks;
Shyama Das Chatterjee pioneered the study of fission phenomena and the measurement of environmental radioactivity and radiocarbon dating;
Gopal Chandra Bhattacharya, an entomologist, threw new light on the mechanism of how queens in insect societies produce other queens, workers or soldiers; and Prof B B Biswas and his group demonstrated the multiplicity of RNAP from higher plant sources. His group also discovered the inositol phosphate cycle in plants.

The Institute conducts path-breaking research in the fields of plant sciences, structural biology, molecular biology, biomedical sciences and biotechnology. It is a national pioneer in research on astroparticle physics and cosmic rays, foundations of quantum physics and interdisciplinary physics.