Aarati Asundi (00:12) Hi everyone and welcome back to the Smart Tea Podcast where we talk about the lives of scientists and innovators who shape the world. I'm Aarati. Jyoti Asundi (00:20) I'm her mom Jyoti. And Aarati, welcome back from your wonderful trip to Europe to Britain in particular. Aarati Asundi (00:30) Yes. Jyoti Asundi (00:31) I'm so glad to have you back. Aarati Asundi (00:32) I had such a great time visiting the UK. We went all over the place. We went to Yorkshire, we went to London, we went to Salisbury, I went to Cambridge, I went all over the place. I'm exhausted. I'm getting over jet lag. It's happening. Jyoti Asundi (00:47) But you have created in me an interest to go over there as well. I want to see all the beautiful places that you went to. The Shakespearean plays, the Lake District. I have heard of the Lake District from my most favorite book ever, Pride and Prejudice... Aarati Asundi (01:05) Of course, Yep. Jyoti Asundi (01:06) ...where Elizabeth Bennet goes there and ever since then I've been wanting to go and you beat me to it. Aarati Asundi (01:11) Yes, it is gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous. We saw waterfalls, we went on hikes, it was just beautiful. We were staying actually next to a little lake. There were swans in the lake. I was like, this is like a fairy tale. Jyoti Asundi (01:22) Oh wow! Yes! And the pictures you sent me of little restaurants that look like little cottages. Wow! Beautiful! Aarati Asundi (01:30) So many cute little houses with, you know, overgrown with ivy. There's so much history there. Everything feels so old and traditional, like in the best possible way, you know? Jyoti Asundi (01:40) Yes. Aarati Asundi (01:41) Everything feels like it's from the 1500s or 1600s. And then you look and you're like, yeah, it is. That's because it is. Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (01:49) That's because it is. So you're coming back from England and you're just getting over jet lag and... Aarati Asundi (01:55) Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (01:55) ...we are moving into another celebration of your birthday. November... Aarati Asundi (01:59) Oh yeah, that's coming up. Jyoti Asundi (02:01) Yes November is your birthday so I wanted to give you a really special gift this time. Aarati Asundi (02:05) Oh, excellent. Jyoti Asundi (02:06) And that is I am going to do a Smart Tea podcast where I'm going to be the narrator for the very first time ever. Aarati Asundi (02:13) Oh my gosh. Amazing! You know what? Our listeners have been asking us about this. They're like... Jyoti Asundi (02:18) No way! I hope I don't disappoint them. Aarati Asundi (02:20) No, they keep saying like you keep saying your mom is such a great storyteller and she's the original storyteller. So when is she going to tell...? Jyoti Asundi (02:25) Oh no, you have hyped me up and now all I can do is go downhill. The only way left for me is to go downhill. Why did you hype me up so much? Aarati Asundi (02:34) You're gonna be great. I'm so excited for this. Jyoti Asundi (02:39) I hope so. I am really excited about this story. It is set in my motherland, India. And it is actually a very apt timing because this story was set in pre-independence India where India was under British colonialism. And the scientist whom I'm wanting to talk about today was also born in November. Aarati Asundi (03:00) How nice! Jyoti Asundi (03:01) So I was like I have to do it. So I created this deadline in my brain so that I would move forward with this. Aarati Asundi (03:08) Well, I very much appreciate it because I was over there in the UK like, you know, I have to write a story while I'm running around at the same time and I'm not prepared. So I'm very glad that you're prepared. This is like perfect timing. Jyoti Asundi (03:18) Yes, this is the first time I'm diving into the amount of work that is required to put out Smart Tea podcast. And I now have a new and deeper appreciation for the sheer amount of work that you do for every episode. Aarati Asundi (03:38) Yeah, it's a lot. Jyoti Asundi (03:39) So until now, I was just being like your, you know, the counterpart here on the story. But now I actually built a story for the podcast and that was a lot of work. Aarati Asundi (03:48) Yep. Jyoti Asundi (03:51) And then I thought about it and I thought, but that is still only half the battle. You have to take this material. and edit it and format it for the podcast. I am truly impressed by the amount of work you do. Aarati Asundi (04:05) Well, it's a good thing I love doing it. Otherwise... you know? Jyoti Asundi (04:07) Hats to you and let's get into the story now. Aarati Asundi (04:13) Yes, I'm so excited to hear this story. I'm so excited to this time be a listener for the first time in a long time. So Jyoti Asundi (04:20) Yes. So I just want to start it off with a small word of warning and that the story is actually woven with intermingling threads of science and the cultural background and politics. So instead of narrating it in a very linear timeline, I'm actually going to narrate it so that each aspect of this complex story can be completed and woven up and tied up together so that the listener has a better understanding of what is happening. Aarati Asundi (04:47) Okay, sounds good. Some historical context, political context, love it. Jyoti Asundi (04:51) There is a lot going on. There are too many pieces that have to come together and I'm going to try my best to make it all make sense. Aarati Asundi (04:57) Cool. Sounds good. Jyoti Asundi (04:59) So picture this. This is the turn of the 20th century and the world is on the brink of a massive technological revolution. We are talking about the birth of wireless communication, the very foundation of radio, smartphone, Wi-Fi networks, keeping us all connected today. And yet, The scientist who laid the groundwork for all of this is still relatively unknown in the West. I'm going to talk today about the genius from India, whose mind seemed to bridge this impossible gap between physics and botany and literature. Aarati Asundi (05:37) Whoa. Mm-hmm. Jyoti Asundi (05:37) He was a physicist, he was also a botanist, and he also wrote science fiction. Aarati Asundi (05:43) Oh my gosh, that's such a strange combination. Jyoti Asundi (05:47) He was a true polymath. Have you heard of the word? Aarati Asundi (05:49) Mm-hmm. Yes, Just got his fingers and everything. Jyoti Asundi (05:53) Yes, that's somebody like you. Aarati Asundi (05:55) I don't know if I'd go that far, but yeah. Jyoti Asundi (05:57) You are sharing your birthday with an extraordinary scientist named Dr. Jagadish Chandra Bose. He was the visionary who gave us the foundation of wireless communication. He proved that plants possess a nervous system and like I said he has even pioneered Bengali science fiction. So let us begin our story. Our story begins in the Dhaka district of the Bengal presidency. So in colonized India, Bengal was its own province and it's in the Dhaka district. And today that place is in modern day Bangladesh. And that's where Dr. Jagdish Chandra Bose was born on the 30th of November in 1858 in a place called Mynesingh. And he was born into a family that was firmly positioned into middle or upper class. His father was Bhagwan Bose and served as a headmaster, a deputy magistrate and later he became an assistant commissioner of police. So you can imagine that he is fairly well to do. Aarati Asundi (07:03) Yes. Jyoti Asundi (07:04) He is not struggling. The family is well set up actually. Aarati Asundi (07:08) Yes. Jyoti Asundi (07:09) Now the father was a leading member of a movement called Brahmo Samaj. Have you ever heard of this? I don't think you would have, but I just wanted to know. Aarati Asundi (07:18) Never, no. No. Jyoti Asundi (07:21) Okay. So, It was a reformist movement. was a progressive movement that was born within Hinduism. They went back to the very roots of Hinduism and said, no, this is what the essence is. And they reject all these other frameworks that Hinduism was dealing with. The caste system, the idol worship, the social hierarchies that had corrupted Hinduism, they rejected all of that. instead, they believed in this beautiful synthesis of reason and faith. said the western thinking of reasoning and thinking that is very good but the eastern thinking of faith and devotion is also very good so they had a beautiful synthesis of reason and faith. Aarati Asundi (08:03) Okay. Jyoti Asundi (08:04) And the followers of this movement promoted the worship of monotheistic and formless god. Aarati Asundi (08:08) Mm-hmm. Okay. Jyoti Asundi (08:10) Yeah they said there is only one God, there is only one form, it is the supreme all-pervading force and Hinduism you know is known for having so many gods. Aarati Asundi (08:22) Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (08:22) So many forms of gods. They said none of that, keep it simple, just believe in the truth, believe in reasoning and faith. Aarati Asundi (08:30) Yeah. People I think often think that Hinduism has hundreds of gods, but the way I was taught it was that there is only one and all the hundreds of gods are basically different faces of that one all pervading force. Jyoti Asundi (08:43) Exactly, that's exactly... Aarati Asundi (08:45) Okay, so that's what they were kind of laying the foundation for. Jyoti Asundi (08:50) They are laying that but they are going one step further. So that's actually how I try to teach now. You know that I go every Sunday to do a Hindu Sunday school thing and that's how I teach the children who come to me Aarati Asundi (09:04) And it's not just Hindu gods either. It's every god, Jyoti Asundi (09:06) Correct. Aarati Asundi (09:07) even Allah, even Jesus, even like all the gods are the same. Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (09:10) Yes, everybody is having, yeah, there are so many households in India where they have a, statue of Mother Mary or a picture of Jesus Christ and right next to it will be Krishna or right next to it will be Rama. That's how we worship Aarati Asundi (09:25) Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (09:27) But this movement was taking it one step further and saying, just don't even go for the form. is just presence. It is a divine, higher presence. Aarati Asundi (09:39) Mm-hmm. Got it. Jyoti Asundi (09:41) And that is the presence that actually unites all existence. So they say this supreme all-pervading force is present in all of existence, not just people. And you can imagine how broad and open-minded his father is. And so, young Jagdish, being shaped very profoundly by this worldview. And is shaping everything about him, his scientific philosophy, his social ethics, everything is being shaped by this. So it started off very early on. So like I said, they were firmly upper middle class. And in those days, sending kids to schools that were based in the Western English education system was a coveted status symbol. They were like, you know, we want to be just like the Britishers because it seeped into the Indian psyche that they wanted to imitate the Western world. Aarati Asundi (10:37) Yes. Jyoti Asundi (10:37) And so going to a school that was based on the western education system or the English education system was a very coveted status symbol. Only the rich could afford it. Aarati Asundi (10:47) Yes. Jyoti Asundi (10:48) But Bose's father had very unusual views how he should be educated. He sent young Jagadish to a very local school which is in the Indian system, it is known as, paathshaala. "Shaala" basically means school and "paath" is where you get your education. This school is kind based in the very traditional Hindu system of teaching. It designed organically around the daily rural lives of the farming and fishing communities. Aarati Asundi (11:20) So his father did not send him to a British school? Jyoti Asundi (11:24) Not yet, not when he was young. Aarati Asundi (11:26) Okay. Jyoti Asundi (11:27) So he wanted his formative young years to be steeped in the Indian traditional school system. Aarati Asundi (11:35) Got it. Got it. Jyoti Asundi (11:36) And then once he has developed his basic morals, his basic ethics, then, only then he went on. He did go on to get a Western style education, but then who he is as a person is already set. Aarati Asundi (11:50) Okay, got it. Jyoti Asundi (11:52) So you can imagine this school is set up for more like the poorer communities. So Jagadish talks about how his classmate would be the son of a fisherman and his other classmate would be the son of the Muslim driver who served his family. Aarati Asundi (12:12) It's almost the reverse of what we do here. Like when you go to college you meet all sorts of different people from all different walks of life. Jyoti Asundi (12:18) Absolutely, exactly. Aarati Asundi (12:19) It's like that, but starting it when you're five. Jyoti Asundi (12:23) His father is like, no, you need to understand your roots. Aarati Asundi (12:26) Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (12:27) You basic education, your first step before you learn anything at all, you need to know who you are as a person. Aarati Asundi (12:33) Yes. And meet all these other people who have very different lives than you, very different levels of privilege. Cause he was born at a very privileged high status. Jyoti Asundi (12:44) Exactly. Aarati Asundi (12:44) And if he only interacted with people like that, he wouldn't have an understanding of what like fishermen went through or what, you know, Muslim families- their traditions. Jyoti Asundi (12:55) Yes! Aarati Asundi (12:55) And so this is like a very early, you know, when he's still young and a child and a sponge. He can soak up like, you know, yeah. Jyoti Asundi (13:02) You got it, you hit the nail on the head. When he's a sponge, they want to put these kinds of values in him. Aarati Asundi (13:08) That's great. I love that. Jyoti Asundi (13:10) And the other thing, like I said, one of the things, one of the really bad things that in addition to the colonialism that the British subjected India to, one of the really bad things that they had done was this "divide and conquer" is what they called it. And so they would create this us versus them mentality wherever they amongst the people so that nobody could be united enough to fight against the colonial rulers. And one of the biggest targets was Hindus versus Muslims and that has now gone in and it has really set in. Aarati Asundi (13:43) Yeah, that still exists today. Jyoti Asundi (13:45) It's still continuing today Aarati Asundi (13:46) It's still there, yeah. Jyoti Asundi (13:48) Because it really favors politicians. It really favors people in power to kind of divide people. So Jagadish never felt that because of this kind of upbringing. He never saw the differences amongst the various people. He would always be very surprised as to why do people feel that, the Muslims are different from us? We are all one big family. What is going on? Aarati Asundi (14:11) Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (14:12) And later in life, when speaking at a conference, Dr. Bose described the effect this early education had on him. And I'm just paraphrasing his words here He says, my classmates at the paathshaala were the sons of the farmers and the fishermen. I listened spellbound to their stories of birds and animals and aquatic creatures. Perhaps these stories created in my mind a keen interest in investigating the workings of nature. I now realize that being sent at the most plastic period of my life to the vernacular school allowed me to learn my own thoughts and to receive the heritage of our national culture through the medium of our own literature. I thus considered myself one with the people and never to place myself in a position of assumed superiority. It is at the paathshaala that I first derived the lesson of what it is that constitutes true manhood. Aarati Asundi (15:17) Wow, that's amazing. What a great father for setting him up that way. Jyoti Asundi (15:18) Yeah, I swear I just I got goosebumps. I had goosebumps when I listened to this. It's like, yes, that's what it is. You know, what does it mean to be a man? Think of it like that. So I was I was already touched. Aarati Asundi (15:38) Fantastic parenting by the father to have that kind of foresight also. Jyoti Asundi (15:45) Exactly, there is more about his father that comes and how that influences young Bose. So, and we'll go into that and a little more about else he said about his mother here as well. He says, when I returned home from school, accompanied by my school fellows, my mother welcomed and fed all of us without discrimination. Although she was an orthodox old fashioned lady, she treated all of them as her own children. Aarati Asundi (16:11) That's wonderful. Jyoti Asundi (16:13) That's such an Indian mom thing to do. Aarati Asundi (16:15) It really is. It was reminding me of, with my best friend, that's how it happened. We would carpool together to and from school and she would... Jyoti Asundi (16:23) Yes. Aarati Asundi (16:23) ...end up staying at our house and she would end up having two dinners actually because we'd all come home and we would all eat. And then she would go to her house and eat dinner again over there. So but she was like, I can't resist eating... Jyoti Asundi (16:36) That is the way we moms, we Indian moms show love for whoever comes into our orbit Eat, eat I have made food, Yeah Aarati Asundi (16:42) Yeah. Eat. Eat food. Yes. Eat. What are you eating? Yeah. I saw one joke like that actually, where it was like, you know, the mom comes and says, you must be hungry? Eat something here. Let me make this for you, rice or whatever. And you're like, no, no, no, no, no. And the mom keeps going down this list of things that they have that you can eat. And then the final last resort for the mom is okay, have some chai. And it's like you can't refuse. Jyoti Asundi (17:07) Yes, you have to accept something from my hand. Aarati Asundi (17:11) You have to have at least some chai. And then when you finally are like, okay, fine, I've rejected like everything else. I can have a cup of chai. Then that chai itself turns into a whole meal because it's not just a cup of chai. Jyoti Asundi (17:17) Yes. Yes. Because with the chai you need to have a biscuit or a sweet. Aarati Asundi (17:26) Yeah, you need to have snacks Jyoti Asundi (17:17) So now you work your way back upwards and start including things that were rejected. Aarati Asundi (17:29) Yes. So you end up eating a full meal anyway. Yes. Yes. Jyoti Asundi (17:34) This is so typical of an Indian mom. Aarati Asundi (17:38) Yes. Yeah. That's wonderful. What a great family he had. Jyoti Asundi (17:42) He was won- it's really wonderful. So he stayed in the paathshaala until he was around 12 years old, the most formative years of his life he spent over there. And moved on to other schools. There is a school, the Hare School, and then there was an SFX Green Herald International School. Whatever, mean, this is name of the school. So I'm just stating it as it is. Aarati Asundi (18:05) Random. All right. Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (18:06) Yeah, random school. But at this school, his classmates were mostly not Indians and they were also older teenage boys. So he felt very lonely. Aarati Asundi (18:18) Were they British? Jyoti Asundi (18:19) This is not explicitly stated but I think that is true because I like I said they were a rich family and his father would have picked up really highly recommended school. Aarati Asundi (18:30) Yes. Okay. Jyoti Asundi (18:32) So he was very lonely, but he had always been a tinkerer at heart and he took on a very hands-on approach to his circumstance. By this time, his father had become a deputy magistrate. So they had a large house actually. They, it's practically an estate, you can call it. And their local community was hit by a malaria pandemic. So his father, who was incredibly public spirited, set out to help the orphans of the epidemic by providing training. Because the malaria epidemic disrupted a lot of families, a lot of orphans were left behind. So in his estate, he sets up a foundry shop, he sets up a smithy shop, he sets up a carpentry shop. Aarati Asundi (19:18) Wow. Jyoti Asundi (19:18) And Bose becomes completely fascinated by this. Like, yes, this is, this is it. This is life. And at one point he persuaded his mom to melt some of this, you know how in India we have this knickknacks, metal art works. Aarati Asundi (19:31) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (19:33) So he, they had like scrap brass knickknacks. So he persuaded her to give those up. And he melted it all so that He could cast a working model of a miniature cannon. Aarati Asundi (19:44) Oh my gosh. Jyoti Asundi (19:45) that he could then really load with gunpowder and he could fire it. Aarati Asundi (19:49) Wow. That's amazing. Jyoti Asundi (19:50) So this is what he does at the foundry because he's lonely. Aarati Asundi (19:54) Yeah. my goodness. Jyoti Asundi (19:56) And then he built housing for all his pets at the carpentry shop. Aarati Asundi (20:00) what do you mean pets? Jyoti Asundi (20:01) The family had pets, you know? Aarati Asundi (20:03) So just all his like all the animals that he- He had a bunch of animals and....? Jyoti Asundi (20:04) Yeah, all the animals that lived around his estate he built housing for all of them in his in the carpentry shop. Aarati Asundi (20:10) So cute just like a bunch of dog houses. Jyoti Asundi (20:13) So Kyro would have had a house. Aarati Asundi (20:14) Yeah! Jyoti Asundi (20:15) You're slacking Aarati. You're totally slacking. Aarati Asundi (20:16) I know. Completely neglecting him. Jyoti Asundi (20:19) Exactly. Your dog has to live in a small bed in in your room. That's not fair Aarati Asundi (20:23) But although, you know, he rules this house, so... Jyoti Asundi (20:25) Yes. And there is another fascinating thing about his childhood. When he was a very small child, he spent hours being fascinated by a sickle-shaped stream which flowed right under an old wooden bridge at the end of a large meadow in front of his family home. He loved this stream and this bridge that went over it and he would sit for hours listening to the burble of water and tracking its flows. And this is part of what had sparked his lifelong fascination with nature and biological impulses. Aarati Asundi (21:01) I mean, yeah, that sounds beautiful, Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (21:03) It sounds beautiful. And now feeling lonely at school, he directed his energies to recreate the stream and bridge and a miniature garden right within the school campus. Aarati Asundi (21:15) Oh my gosh. So he's like, I'm bored, I'm just gonna landscape this school. Jyoti Asundi (21:27) Yes, with exactly, with a pump and everything. The little miniature stream would flow because he created a pump for it. He made a bridge... Aarati Asundi (21:25) Wow. Jyoti Asundi (21:26) ...and a rock garden around it. This particular sickle-shaped stream and everything had uh extreme nostalgic significance for him. It had such a deep root in his heart that he actually recreated this many times in many of his later residences. And even later in life, when he had achieved global scientific renown and then he made a permanent home in Kolkata. even there he included this landscape arrangement of this stream and this bridge and this rock garden. Aarati Asundi (21:59) Oh wow. I mean he found something that gave him peace. Great. Jyoti Asundi (22:03) Yes even today it is his home and this whole arrangement is preserved in Kolkata. Aarati Asundi (22:10) Oh nice. Jyoti Asundi (22:10) And it is a historic home today and it has a place of honor it is called Acharya Bhavan. Acharya means teacher and Bhavan means home so it's basically "teacher's home". Aarati Asundi (22:19) Mm-hmm. The teacher's home. Jyoti Asundi (22:22) That's what it's called and it serves as a permanent monument to the childhood curiosity that birthed modern Indian experimental science. Aarati Asundi (22:31) Ooh, I hope there's pictures online. I wanna go see. Jyoti Asundi (22:33) Yeah, I think that is that are it's not as good. I think we may have to visit. I'm wanting to go. Aarati Asundi (22:38) Actually visit. This is the thing about this podcast. It's like now you want to go see all these places. Jyoti Asundi (22:42) I want to go see it. do. I have heard of Dr. Jagdish Chandra Bose when I was growing up. I knew he was good, but I had no idea. I mean, he literally brought goosebumps to me. Every single thing I learned about him for the podcast made me think, I can't believe it. I can't believe people live such good lives such good people existed. Aarati Asundi (23:05) Yeah, I guess that's the downside of the podcast is that you feel inferior when you're talking about all these people. Jyoti Asundi (23:09) I am a very self-absorbed creature when you put me in context of Dr. Bose. Very, very, very wonderful. So he finished his schooling and then he takes off. intellectual trajectory is completely unstoppable. He joined St. Xavier's College in Kolkata in 1875, and he passed the entrance exam that was required to enroll for a BA in physics. And there at St. Xavier's College, he met the Jesuit father, Eugene Lafont, who ignited his passion for the natural sciences. So now he's enrolling for physics, but then he's also equally keenly interested in natural sciences as well. Aarati Asundi (23:55) Okay. Jyoti Asundi (23:55) So now he completes college and then to further do postgraduate studies, goes on to London. He goes to the University of Cambridge, Aarati Asundi (24:06) Okay. Jyoti Asundi (24:07) And there he studied under titans like Lord Rayleigh. There was Michael Foster, James Dewar, Dewar Flask, remember? Yeah, Aarati Asundi (24:16) Yeah, yeah. Jyoti Asundi (24:18) Francis Darwin, not to be confused with Charles Darwin, but equally big. Aarati Asundi (24:22) Okay. Jyoti Asundi (24:22) Francis Balfour, I'm not saying the names very well. Sidney Vines. And then was doing physics over there at Cambridge, but then he also wanted to do natural science. So he transferred to Christ College which was also in Cambridge, to study natural sciences. So then in 1885, he completed his higher education at Cambridge and he headed back to India. And he accepted a position as a professor at the Presidency College in Kolkata. Aarati Asundi (24:55) Okay. Jyoti Asundi (24:55) Right away he hits a massive wall of discrimination. Aarati Asundi (24:59) Really, in Kolkata? Jyoti Asundi (25:01) In Kolkata. So because this was under the colonial empire remember this. Aarati Asundi (25:05) Right. Jyoti Asundi (25:06) So the British colonial setup was deeply racist and they did not believe that an Indian could actually be a good scientist. Aarati Asundi (25:14) Even though he's been to Cambridge and he has all the, you know, schooling and he's been everywhere. Jyoti Asundi (25:19) Yes. So because of this bias, they constantly held him back by systematically, cutting his pay and denying him research funding. So first of all, an Indian professor was paid only 2/3 of the salary that a European could get. Aarati Asundi (25:37) wow. Jyoti Asundi (25:37) In addition, categorized his appointment as "temporary". Aarati Asundi (25:43) Mm-hmm. He's not a full professor or anything. It's not a full term, full time position. Jyoti Asundi (25:48) Correct. It's a full-time position. He is made to do full work. Aarati Asundi (25:51) But it's like he's on probation almost all the time. Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (25:54) Practically all the time, permanent probation. Exactly. Which further halves his pay, leaving him with 1/3 of the pay of his European peers. Aarati Asundi (26:04) Oh my goodness. Jyoti Asundi (26:05) Bose's response to this discrimination was legendary. In a quiet but fierce act of protest, Bose refused to accept any remuneration for his work until discriminative salary structure was corrected. Aarati Asundi (26:20) Nice. So he's like, "You're gonna you're gonna cut my pay, then just don't pay me at all." basically. Jyoti Asundi (26:24) Don't pay me anything. Aarati Asundi (26:26) what's the point? Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (26:27) He was basically working without being paid and yet he continued to fulfill his commitments with full devotion. He was popular among the students because he was such a good teacher. He demonstrated wonderful experiments Aarati Asundi (26:41) Mm-hmm. Jyoti Asundi (26:41) And yet he said, I'm not accepting any pay unless you pay me correctly. Aarati Asundi (26:46) That's a very interesting form of protest. Jyoti Asundi (26:49) Yes, and this kind of silent but very active protest is called Satyagraha which is Satya plus Agraha which means "adherence to the truth". This is that active non-violent resistance Gandhi has talked about. Aarati Asundi (27:04) And what Kamala Sohonie did in one of our episodes by sitting outside that professor's office... Jyoti Asundi (27:10) Exactly. Aarati Asundi (27:11) ...and just being like, I do not accept your rejection of me. Jyoti Asundi (27:15) Exactly. What he saying is you refuse to cooperate with the discrimination. You refuse to collude with the farce and you refuse to do anything that can kind of assuage the conscience of the perpetrators the crime. So ultimately what happens is that the injustice stands there unadorned, naked for the world to see what is happening. Until the wrongdoing must be addressed and the people who are doing the wrong have to fix it. Aarati Asundi (27:45) Yeah, don't say it's okay or I'll put up with it or anything. Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (27:47) Yes, I have been, I paid him some, you cannot say anything And that's exactly what happened. The wrongdoing finally did get addressed. Charles Henry Tawney and Sir Alfred Woodley Croft, who both senior British education officials who were, you know, in charge of the entire system there who were the people who initially opposed and discriminated against Bose were ultimately forced to concede. Aarati Asundi (28:16) Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (28:16) So after three years, they converted his position from temporary to permanent, but, still Bose said no. And ultimately they ended up having to give him full retroactive pay at the same scale as the Western professors were receiving. Aarati Asundi (28:35) Nice. So he not only got paid full time, he got retroactive payment. Jyoti Asundi (28:39) Correct. For all the years that got missed out. The timeline is a bit iffy. Some say that the correction took 8 years and some say the correction took more than that. There are some places where I saw that this discrimination went on for 15 years. Aarati Asundi (28:58) Oh my god. That's insane. Jyoti Asundi (29:00) But then at the end of it he receives this very substantial lump sum. Aarati Asundi (29:05) But I mean like he didn't have any guarantee that that was going to happen. Jyoti Asundi (29:10) He didn't have any guarantee and he was living off of the charity of his relatives. I saw accounts where they say that his sister and sister's husband helped take care of him and his family. Aarati Asundi (29:22) Yeah, yeah. Jyoti Asundi (29:24) Yes. And once he received this substantial lump sum, he promptly allocated all of that to his ongoing research projects. Aarati Asundi (29:33) Of course. That's what scientists do, right? You get an award of any kind and it's like true scientists put that right back into the lab. Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (29:39) More money for research! I have this burning question now I can buy this equipment. Aarati Asundi (29:46) Yeah, yeah. I mean you hear that about like the Nobel Prize winners too. It's like you won a million dollars! It's like great, I can upgrade my flasks, you know. Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (29:54) Exactly, and that's exactly what he did and a large chunk of it also went ultimately to his ultimate legacy, the establishment of the Bose Institute, which we will talk about later. Aarati Asundi (30:08) Okay. Jyoti Asundi (30:09) But remember, I mean, yeah, he got paid retroactively, but exactly like you said, this does not take away those long agonizing years where he worked without pay at all, How can a person do that? and how much fortitude it takes for somebody to Aarati Asundi (30:22) Yeah, to stick to that and also not try to find a different position where he would get paid. Like, I'm sure there were institutes that, you know, were not British run, but would not have got him the same acclaim, maybe, or he wouldn't have been able to do everything that he wanted to do, but he would have been paid properly and respected properly. But he's like, No, this is the place for me to be. Unfortunately, it's run by these very racist people and so the only option forward then is for me to fix the system. Jyoti Asundi (30:54) Exactly, and in addition, he's not letting the quality of his work to suffer at all. Aarati Asundi (31:00) Yes. He can't. He can't give any excuse of like, well, the reason we're not paying you or the reason your position is temporary is because you're not as good as the other teachers here or other professors here or whatever it is. Jyoti Asundi (31:11) Exactly. Aarati Asundi (31:14) He can't give them any excuse to say you're not fulfilling your duties a hundred percent, which is why we're not paying you a hundred percent. Jyoti Asundi (31:19) Yeah. He did his part correctly. And then it's like you guys are not doing the right thing. I'm not going to accept any half measures from you. Do it right. Just as I'm doing everything right. Aarati Asundi (31:32) And he understood he was in a position where he could do that. He knew his family would take care of him. And he's like, for the people in the future... Jyoti Asundi (31:40) Yes, exactly. Aarati Asundi (31:40) I need to be the one who stands my ground because I can, because I have that safety net and I don't actually... Jyoti Asundi (31:48) And the courage. Aarati Asundi (31:48) I'm not gonna die if I don't get paid, you know? Whereas somebody who's maybe from a less privileged background would be like, I can't stand here and not get paid because I need to eat. Jyoti Asundi (31:57) Yes, because I have to feed my family, my kids are crying. Yeah, none of that. Aarati Asundi (32:01) Yeah. And he's like, No, I've got it taken care of because my family is great and will take care of me. Jyoti Asundi (32:07) Exactly. Aarati Asundi (32:07) So I will use that privilege to stand my ground. That's amazing. Jyoti Asundi (32:11) Yet another indignity he faced was the complete lack of support for his research. After a lot of argument, he was allotted a small space in an annex for his research and this was situated right next to the restrooms. Aarati Asundi (32:28) Oh my god. Oh, that's horrible. Ugh. Jyoti Asundi (32:30) Yes, And this is where he began his pioneering investigations into microwave radio optics using his own personal funds for his own research from pay that he does not receive. Aarati Asundi (32:45) Oh my god. Oh my goodness That's just Jyoti Asundi (32:51) Incredible. Yeah incredible. Incredible. Aarati Asundi (32:52) Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (32:55) Dr. Jagdish Chandra Bose married Abala Das in February 1887, two years after he came back so he's still in the middle of all the struggles. The couple had only one child who unfortunately died in infancy. They poured much of their maternal and paternal energy into their student community, into their nieces and nephews and public education initiatives. Aarati Asundi (33:20) Oh nice. Jyoti Asundi (33:21) And just as a heads and I'm not going to go into much of this at all because I don't want to be sitting here for three days talking about but Lady Abala Bose far more than just a supportive spouse. She was a pioneering feminist social worker and educationist and she also has left a massive footprint on modern Indian history. So just this is a power couple in their own ways. Aarati Asundi (33:45) Wow. Wonderful. Love it. _______________________________________________________________________________________ Aarati Asundi (33:53) Hi everyone, Aarati here. I hope you're enjoying the podcast. If so, and you wish someone would tell your science story, I founded a science communications company called Sykom, that's S-Y-K-O-M, that can help. Sykom blends creativity with scientific accuracy to create all types of science, communications, content, including explainer videos, slide presentations, science, writing, and more. We work with academic researchers, tech companies, nonprofits, or really any scientists. To help simplify your science, check us out at sykommer.com. That's S-Y-K-O-M-M-E-R.com. Back to the story. _______________________________________________________________________________________ Jyoti Asundi (34:41) So now we are in the late 19th century and the scientific world was electrified by James Clerk Maxwell's theories and Heinrich Hertz, experiments. Aarati Asundi (34:53) Heinrich Hertz? Jyoti Asundi (34:54) Yes. And they have just proven that electromagnetic waves exist. This is where we are in terms of scientific history. Aarati Asundi (35:04) Got it. Jyoti Asundi (35:05) So they worked with long, bulky radio waves. But Bose took a radically different path to interrogating these waves. He decided to go small. Bose realized that long waves were very difficult to study in a confined lab because they required massive equipment and they suffered from a lot of interference. So he designed, because remember, he's always a tinkerer. Aarati Asundi (35:34) Mm-hmm. Jyoti Asundi (35:35) So he designed and handcrafted his own state-of-the-art apparatus that generated millimeter waves, wavelengths that were scaled down to just five millimeters, which is like 60 gigahertz. Aarati Asundi (35:47) Oh wow. Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (35:49) So by doing this, he became like a pioneer in microwave physics. He was the first to study how these tiny invisible waves behaved just like light. And he, using equipment that invented himself, he successfully demonstrated that microwave beams could be refracted, diffracted, polarized using ordinary materials. And he drew his materials from just the common, like no fancy stuff. He used sulfur and pitch and even jute, which is like, remember jute bags? Aarati Asundi (36:21) Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. Like the grass kind of fiber. Jyoti Asundi (36:24) Exactly. Even those, yeah, he would even take those jute fibers from plants to use as materials to deflect and diffract his waves. Aarati Asundi (36:33) Oh nice. Jyoti Asundi (36:34) Yes, and today actually the experiments that he did the same millimeter waves that he has done in the 1890s, they have now become the backbone of 5G technology and scientific communications. Aarati Asundi (36:45) Dang man, that's crazy. Jyoti Asundi (36:48) So he's really the father of wireless communication. Aarati Asundi (36:50) So he just took these experiments that were really huge, that required really big expensive equipment and scaled it down. Jyoti Asundi (36:58) Huge, huge mirrors, because if you want to show that electromagnetic waves are, you know, refracting or diffracting or reflecting or whatever you need, big, big, big mirrors. And he scaled it all down. Aarati Asundi (37:10) I wonder how much of that was also like just necessity because he doesn't have funding, Jyoti Asundi (37:16) Yes. Aarati Asundi (37:17) He's squeezed into this little annex next to the restrooms, he doesn't have space, you know. Jyoti Asundi (37:20) No, also it's the thought process also because working with microwaves very convenient for everybody but he is the one who came up with the thought idea. Aarati Asundi (37:30) Yeah, no, but that's what I'm saying is that because he has limited resources and because he has limited space squeezed in next to this bathrooms in the annex, he's like, "How can I study this without needing all this fancy equipment? And if I can figure out a way to do it, then everyone could do it. Like, why does this field of study need to be the domain of only the rich and the people who have you know, so much funding. If if I can make this accessible to anyone, how much further the field could go." Jyoti Asundi (38:00) Exactly. Aarati Asundi (38:01) And so it's like a double win. I win because I get to study this anyway, but then the world wins because now anyone can study it. You don't need this big fancy equipment. Amazing. Jyoti Asundi (38:09) Yes, yes, exactly, So generating these waves was only half the battle though. Now Bose needed a way to actually detect them. And so he had to come up with something else. Aarati Asundi (38:24) Yes. Jyoti Asundi (38:24) So at the time, the scientists used to use a very crude device called a coherer. Aarati Asundi (38:30) Hm. How do you spell it? Jyoti Asundi (38:32) C-O-H-E-R-E-R. Coherer Aarati Asundi (38:35) Hm. Okay. Jyoti Asundi (38:37) And what basically what it is, is a tube filled with metal filings and when the radio wave passed through them they would clump together and the clumping is called to cohere and that's why it's called coherer. Aarati Asundi (38:49) I see. Got it. Jyoti Asundi (38:51) So the radio wave would pass and the metal filings would clump together in the coherer and that would complete the electrical circuit. Aarati Asundi (39:01) Got it. Jyoti Asundi (39:02) But then early coherers were utterly unreliable because every time a radio wave passed after every single signal that passed through them, they had to be mechanically tapped and shaken to loosen the filings... Aarati Asundi (39:15) Yes. Jyoti Asundi (39:15) ...for the next wave to go through, for the next message to pass through. Aarati Asundi (39:18) Yes. Jyoti Asundi (39:19) So Bose revolutionized this with his iron-mercury-iron coherer called it the teledust. Aarati Asundi (39:29) Ooh, nice name. I like it. Jyoti Asundi (39:30) Yes, yes, instead of loose iron filings that cohere together, he used a row of fine iron springs. And these springs barely were touching a drop of mercury. Aarati Asundi (39:44) Okay. Jyoti Asundi (39:45) So when a wireless wave hit the mercury droplet, the electric resistance dropped instantly and detected the wave. And the moment the wave stopped, the mercury would automatically reset itself. There is no tapping required. Aarati Asundi (39:58) Oh nice. Jyoti Asundi (39:59) So it is a first self-recovering coherer. And this is the exact physics and nonlinear behavior that made his receiver operate like a modern semiconductor diode. This is the basis of it. Aarati Asundi (40:15) Oh, interesting. Jyoti Asundi (40:16) So in standard 19th century physics, materials were expected to obey Ohm's law where electric current increases in a straight linear line just as voltage increases. Aarati Asundi (40:27) Yes. Jyoti Asundi (40:27) But Bose noticed that his iron mercury receiver broke this rule. When he mapped out the current and voltage, I and V characteristics, the line was not straight at all. Instead, it formed a curve featuring a distinct knee. Aarati Asundi (40:43) Okay. Jyoti Asundi (40:44) When a very low voltage was applied, this was quote unquote below the knee, the junction offered massive electrical resistance. No current could flow. Aarati Asundi (40:57) Mm-hmm. Jyoti Asundi (40:58) And then once voltage reached a certain specific threshold around say 0.4 or 0.45 volts the electric resistance collapsed. Aarati Asundi (41:09) Okay. Jyoti Asundi (41:10) And that's at the knee. And then once you pass the threshold you're above the knee and then the current begins to flow rapidly and freely. So there is a threshold to it. Aarati Asundi (41:19) Ha. Interesting. Interesting. Jyoti Asundi (41:22) Yes. And what Bose realized was that the receiver was most sensitive to wireless waves when it was artificially biased or primed with a battery right at that 0.45 voltage of that knee threshold, where a tiny incoming electromagnetic ripple was enough to just push it over the knee causing this sudden spike in the current and that is what would make the signal go through. Aarati Asundi (41:51) Oh, okay. Jyoti Asundi (41:52) So to add a little more detail to this, just a simple contact between iron and mercury is creating this diode-like behavior. What's going on, what's going on? And the secret lies in the surface chemistry. So Bose didn't just use pure raw materials, his iron springs and cups were naturally exposed to the atmosphere. So this created a microscopic ultra thin layer of iron oxide just like rust on the surface of the metal and that forms a native semiconductor thin film. So when the liquid mercury presses gently against the thin oxide layer, it doesn't form a simple metallic connection, it forms a metal semiconductor MS junction. And this creates a microscopic potential barrier and then because of this potential barrier at the metal semiconductor interface the junction exhibited is called as "rectification" allowing the current to pass easily in one direction but blocking it in the reverse direction. Bose's receiver is acting like a one way valve to this alternating radio wave that oscillates back and forth. It basically strips off one half of that oscillating wave and converting a direct high frequency radio signal into a smooth readable pulse of direct current. Basically like an AC to DC conversion. Yeah. Aarati Asundi (43:19) Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like I've learnt this in physics, like in high school or maybe college physics or something. Jyoti Asundi (43:27) Yes. In those days, the scientific community, they believed that the coherers worked mechanically, that radio waves caused loose metal filings to physically stick together. So for crude filings, this was partially true. The energy caused tiny arcs that physically micro welded the particles, requiring someone to actually tap the device and break the welds. But Bose's iron-mercury design bypassed this beautifully because of the liquid dynamics that he brings in with mercury and quantum behavior and he very often added a microscopic layer of insulating oil over the mercury and the iron point sat there suspended, separated from the mercury by a fraction of a millimeter of iron and oxide. And when a high frequency electromagnetic wave struck the junction the intense localized electric field broke down that thin insulating barrier and because mercury is a liquid with high surface tension, the moment the radio wave vanished, the mercury immediately snapped back to its original shape, instantly reforming the insulating barrier and the fluid elasticity gave Bose his famous self-recovering property. Aarati Asundi (44:41) So you could just very easily tell whether the iron was touching the mercury or not, Jyoti Asundi (44:46) Exactly. Aarati Asundi (44:47) And depending on that you knew if there was an electromagnetic wave flowing through the device or not. Jyoti Asundi (44:51) Flowing through but it would actually function. It would do what you have set it up to do. Whatever it is, the signal that you are trying to send. You are trying to send signal through and you will come to see, how people were showing the electromagnetic waves passing but whatever the wave is supposed to do, the message that it is supposed to carry. is able to do that and coherer is able to auto-recover. Yes. Aarati Asundi (45:15) Amazing. This is some very high level physics he's doing. Jyoti Asundi (45:18) Very high level, yes, So his deep dive into this physics of this iron-mercury junctions directly inspired his next major invention. He realized that he didn't really need liquid mercury if he could find a stable natural material with the right potential barrier. So he then came up with a lead sulfide ore, is also called galena, G-A-L-E-N-A. Aarati Asundi (45:47) Okay. Jyoti Asundi (45:48) And by pressing a sharp point of wire against a galena crystal, he was able to create a Galena point contact detector. And this is also called, a Cat's Whisker. And this Cat's Whisker. and this Cat's Whisker is what became the heart of modern crystal radio. And it stands in history today as the very first solid state semiconductor device. There is a straight line of evolution that we can draw directly to the modern transistor from this Cat's Whisker Galena point device. Aarati Asundi (46:25) Wow. Amazing. Jyoti Asundi (46:27) Now one small point I want to mention here put a pin on it and then we'll move forward. Bose did not patent the iron coherer that he had the self-recovering coherer Aarati Asundi (46:37) Okay, yeah. Jyoti Asundi (46:39) but he did patent this Cat's whisker the Galena point contact detector in 1901 and I'll come to that in a bit. Aarati Asundi (46:49) Okay. Jyoti Asundi (46:49) So Bose is trying to show this to the world now. He was a bit of a showman always. And in 1895 he set up this grand demonstration. Inside a packed town hall in Kolkata, he was ready to show the world what his invisible waves could do. He set up his millimeter wave transmitter in one room. Aarati Asundi (47:11) Okay. Jyoti Asundi (47:12) In a completely different room behind thick brick walls, he set up the receiver which was connected to a battery and a bell and a pistol. With the flash of sparks from his transmitter, the invisible millimeter waves traveled through the air, penetrated solid brick walls, struck his mercury coherer and then instantly across the room, a bell rang and a pistol fired remotely. Aarati Asundi (47:42) Oh my goodness. Jyoti Asundi (47:43) Without a single wire connecting these devices, Bose had transmitted energy and information through solid matter. He had successfully demonstrated wireless signaling to the public a full year before Marconi patented his own system in England. Aarati Asundi (48:01) Wow. And this is also right around the time of like x-rays and all of that happening. Jyoti Asundi (48:07) Yes. Aarati Asundi (48:07) And we talked about this a bit in our last episode too with William Crooks about, these invisible things that scientists are probing and being able to understand now. It's like there's energy that can move through solid brick walls and there's these waves that can see through your skin and it's like almost magical. And so it's a time for science and theatrics, I feel like. Jyoti Asundi (48:29) Yes, exactly. Aarati Asundi (48:31) And that would have captured the imagination of so many people. Jyoti Asundi (48:33) Yeah, but you will see, he's doing this in Kolkata and the Western world managed to completely overshadow his... Aarati Asundi (48:42) Erase it. Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (48:44) Erase it. The world spent about a hundred years erasing his work. Aarati Asundi (48:47) Yeah, 'cause I've heard of Marconi, but you know... Jyoti Asundi (48:49) Exactly. Aarati Asundi (48:50) Haven't really heard of Bose. Jyoti Asundi (48:52) Exactly. But he was the one from whom Marconi got the idea of the self-recovering coherer. Aarati Asundi (48:59) Mm. Jyoti Asundi (49:00) So what happened? Why did it happen that way? Why did his work not get recognized? Because he was a pure scientist. And this is going back to his roots, which is why I set up his roots so deeply to begin with about all, you know, the unity and about how you should look at the world and things like that. And he believed that knowledge should belong to all of humanity. refused to patent his groundbreaking wireless inventions. Instead, he chose to publish his findings openly. But because he did not commercialize his work, history often credited Marconi with the invention of the radio. Aarati Asundi (49:39) Who probably did patent his work right, so yeah. Jyoti Asundi (49:41) He did patent his work, yes. Aarati Asundi (49:43) Mm-hmm. Jyoti Asundi (49:44) Modern science has corrected the record. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, IEEE, has recognized Bose as the father of radio science today. And today he is remembered as the true architect of our connected world. But been a long road. Aarati Asundi (50:03) Yeah. And it takes such a long time, right? Even now the most famous one is Watson and Crick, and we hear about Watson and Crick and the DNA, and then we're like, but Rosalind Franklin, we need to mention her. Jyoti Asundi (50:14) Correct. Aarati Asundi (50:16) And so even now, you know, I hear people talk about Watson and Crick all the time with no mention of Rosalind Franklin's X-ray crystallography that they relied on so much. So, you know, once history has erased you. It's very hard to bring you back into it. Jyoti Asundi (50:31) Yes, exactly. Aarati Asundi (50:33) Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (50:34) So let's go trace how this happened. How did Bose do all the work and he got erased while Marconi got all the credit? So the root of this controversy lies in April 1899 when Dr. Jagdish Chandra Bose presented his breakthrough paper called On a Self-Recovering Coherer and the Study of the Cohering Action of Different Metals. And he presented this to the prestigious Royal Society of London. Aarati Asundi (51:05) Ah yes. Jyoti Asundi (51:05) In this widely circulated text, Bose detailed the precise design of his iron-mercury, iron-self-recovering coherer. But true to his egalitarian philosophy, he did not patent the technology, leaving the schematic completely open for public use. 21 months after Bose published his paper, Marconi was preparing for his monumental transatlantic wireless experiment. Aarati Asundi (51:34) Okay. Jyoti Asundi (51:34) Up to that point, Marconi's regular coherers made of nickel and silver filings were too slow and too insensitive to capture the signals spanning thousands of miles. He desperately needed a self-recovering receiver. Aarati Asundi (51:49) Yes. Jyoti Asundi (51:50) Historical investigations have pieced together how Bose's design reached Marconi. In 1901, Lieutenant Luigi Solari of the Royal Italian Navy, a childhood friend of Marconi, experimented with Bose's mercury design, which he admitted reading about in an English scientific publication. Aarati Asundi (52:12) Okay. Jyoti Asundi (52:13) Solari made minor structural tweaks to Bose's design, encasing the mercury between iron or carbon electrodes inside a glass tube and he handed the design to Marconi. And then on December 12, 1901, Marconi used this exact mercury autocoherer connected to a telephone earpiece to successfully hear the faint Morse code clicks for the letter S sent from England to Canada. Global history was made. Marconi patented the device as his own. Aarati Asundi (52:47) Mm-hmm. Jyoti Asundi (52:48) Almost immediately a fierce controversy erupted within the European scientific circles regarding where Marconi actually got his magical receiver. Aarati Asundi (52:57) Ah, so they did know that he didn't... Jyoti Asundi (52:59) But not, no, no, no, it's not as good as you think. Aarati Asundi (53:02) Okay. Jyoti Asundi (53:03) Because like I said, Bose had left it open for the public, for anyone to play with it. Aarati Asundi (53:10) Yes. Jyoti Asundi (53:11) And multiple people played with it. And all the plagiarists started fighting with each other, claiming it as theirs. Aarati Asundi (53:17) Of course. Jyoti Asundi (53:18) While the original person stayed in the shadows. So in May 1902, Professor Angelo Banti, editor of the Italian journal of L'Elettricista triggered a scandal by claiming that the mercury receiver had actually been invented by an Italian naval signalman named Paolo Castelli. Aarati Asundi (53:38) Okay. Jyoti Asundi (53:39) Debates soon spilled into major British publications like The Electrician. Marconi faced immense public scrutiny and was forced to modify his patent to acknowledge the Italian Navy calling the device the Italian Navy Coherer. Aarati Asundi (53:55) I see. Jyoti Asundi (53:56) Yeah it's really funny just listen to it's... Aarati Asundi (53:57) Yeah Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (53:59) I'm just like I'm just like going to try and state this as calmly as I can without scoffing all over the place Aarati Asundi (54:06) Yeah. 'Cause I'm just going back to that thing again where you were like saying that no one believed that an Indian could be a scientist, and so it's like literally anyone else. Fine, the Italians did something, I guess. Jyoti Asundi (54:17) Yes, literally anybody else. It's not Bose. Aarati Asundi (54:20) Yeah. If a British person has to give up some credit, it's like, okay, fine, I suppose the Italians did something, or the French did something. Jyoti Asundi (54:25) We'll let the Italians have a little bit of it. Yeah. Aarati Asundi (54:26) But not not an Indian. Jyoti Asundi (54:29) Of course not. Absolutely not. Aarati Asundi (54:29) Not an Indian person. No. Jyoti Asundi (54:30) Absolutely not. Aarati Asundi (54:34) Anyone else. Anyone else in Europe. Okay, we'll give the Germans a piece of the pie, sure. Jyoti Asundi (54:36) Yes, anybody is okay. Aarati Asundi (54:34) Yeah. Not this Indian guy though. Jyoti Asundi (54:41) Exactly. So during an elite lecture at the Royal Institution in June 1902, Marconi carefully dodged the questions attributing the device's origin loosely as a gift from the Navy while keeping its true internal workings vague. Because European historians were locked in an Italy versus England debate over Castelli and Solari, Bose's original 1899 paper was entirely overlooked. Because Bose had refused to patent his work, his research was plagiarized by many, and it ended up becoming a fight amongst thieves for the ultimate honor, while the true inventor was conveniently relegated to the shadows. Aarati Asundi (55:26) Do we know if he harbored any resentment about that? Did he care or was he just kind of above it all? Jyoti Asundi (55:30) No, he never engaged in any public mud slinging and in fact he had already pivoted away moving on from physics to study plant physiology. Aarati Asundi (55:43) Oh my gosh. He was just like, all right, I'm done with that. You so while everyone else is fighting in the mud, he's gone off and yeah, doing his own thing. Jyoti Asundi (55:48) He's gone off. But before I pivot off to plant physiology, I want to complete this thread with a positive note on where we stand today. Aarati Asundi (56:00) Yes. Jyoti Asundi (56:01) For nearly a century, the true architect behind the transatlantic radio signal remained buried in a footnote. However, modern science eventually corrected the record. In 1997, 1998 or so, the IEEE, conducted extensive historical forensic audits and they proved conclusively that the Italian Navy coherer was a direct trivial variation of Bose's 1899 invention. The IEEE formally recognized Dr. J.C. Bose as the father of radio science. Aarati Asundi (56:40) Nearly a hundred years later. Jyoti Asundi (56:41) 100 years later. Aarati Asundi (56:43) Oh my god. Jyoti Asundi (56:44) Scientists realized that Bose's mercury coherer was actually the world's first solid-state diode detector. Noble laureate Sir Neville Mott noted that Bose was at least 60 years ahead of his time in anticipating modern semiconductor electronics. Aarati Asundi (57:02) Wow. Jyoti Asundi (57:03) Decades later, during a lecture at the Bose Institute in Kolkata, Marconi's own grandson, Francesco Parisi Marconi, openly acknowledged Bose's foundational contributions. Aarati Asundi (57:17) Oh good! Jyoti Asundi (57:17) He noted that while his grandfather commercialized radio, he did not invent anything fundamentally new. He had just built upon the genius of thinkers like J.C. Bose. Aarati Asundi (57:28) Yes. Jyoti Asundi (57:29) To permanently solidify his place in global tech history, the Institute of Electric and Electronics Engineering instituted the prestigious IEEE Jagadish Chandra Bose Medal in Wireless Communications to honor innovators shaping our modern, connected world. Aarati Asundi (57:47) Amazing. I'm glad he got the credit finally and that it came out. Better late than never. Jyoti Asundi (57:54) Yes. Aarati Asundi (57:55) But I don't have that bone in my body. That altruistic like, you know, yeah, I'm just putting this out here for the good of humanity. Jyoti Asundi (58:03) Correct. Aarati Asundi (58:04) And now the knowledge is known and I don't care who gets credit, Jyoti Asundi (58:07) Exactly, Aarati Asundi (58:08) Truly amazing. Jyoti Asundi (58:09) Like I said, I come across as a very small, self-absorbed creature when I think about great brains like this. Absolute geniuses who are like, everything I do is for the betterment of humanity, I don't want any part in it, I don't want any credit in it. Aarati Asundi (58:27) Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (58:28) And actually he has moved on to plant biology by this point. Aarati Asundi (58:31) Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (58:32) And I hope you all stay tuned for part two of the story where we will deep dive into his surprising shift into the field of biology. Aarati Asundi (58:41) Oh we're getting a part two out of this. Excellent. I love it. Jyoti Asundi (58:44) Because like I said, I gave you a hint right in the beginning where he's a physicist and he's completely interested in natural sciences and luckily for both you and me wasn't able to dig up a lot about his work as author. Aarati Asundi (58:58) Right, he was an author too. Jyoti Asundi (59:00) He was an author. Aarati Asundi (59:01) Oh, I forgot that for a minute. Yeah. I would be happy for the story to end right there and be like, wow, he he did this amazing thing in like... Jyoti Asundi (59:06) Yeah, no, there is so much more. Aarati Asundi (59:11) ...you know, semiconductors and wireless transmission. Amazing. What a wonderful scientist. How great. And it's like, no, it's- it's only like one third of the story. Jyoti Asundi (59:15) Yes, we are just barely scratching the surface. is so much more to it. It is incredible. It's like, you know, my very first attempt, I have bitten off more than I can chew. Aarati Asundi (59:28) As per usual, that's what you do, mommy. You're just like when you wanna do something, you're like, you know what we could do the most amazing thing. It's like baby steps, baby steps. Jyoti Asundi (59:37) And I didn't, I personally, I did not know how great he was. Aarati Asundi (59:41) Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (59:41) I knew little bits of everything, but I didn't know the entire story because his history is so well hidden from the world that even Indians are just finding out about the details now. Aarati Asundi (59:51) Mm-hmm. This is the thing about this podcast. Like, you know, I sometimes I deliberately try to choose a little bit more obscure scientists because I'm hoping that there's not as much information about them just to, limit my own research time because, you know, people have suggested, why don't you do Darwin? Why don't you do Newton, Galileo, all these people? And I'm like, they're so famous and there's so much information about them, which means that I have to do so much research to do that story. But even when the scientist is not as well known, all of a sudden somewhere I'll find like a five hundred page biography of them... Jyoti Asundi (1:00:27) Yes. Yes. Aarati Asundi (1:00:28) ...and I'm like, my god, okay, now I have to read this. And it sounds like, you know, it's like, that's what happened to you kind of. Like, welcome to the world of researching for this podcast. Jyoti Asundi (1:00:33) Absolutely. There is so much to it the way his own personal ethics intersects with his science is again another incredible way of looking at life. I'm just astounded that such a noble being lived and we know so little about such nobility and such grace and such dignity and such genius all wrapped into one. Aarati Asundi (1:00:58) Well you're doing a great job of telling the story. I'm so excited for part two, but I do think my brain needs a little bit of a rest now. I'm still a bit jet lagged. Jyoti Asundi (1:01:07) Yes but do come in for part two, we'll take a deep dive into his surprising shift into the field of biology, which will mark a completely new chapter in his career. The most interesting thing though is that just as he had so many detractors from the West. He found an incredible and unexpected transatlantic support for his work and how his supporters finally persuaded this reluctant scientist to file a patent for his invention of the Cat's Whisker. We'll talk about that in our part two. Aarati Asundi (1:01:42) Okay, great. I'm looking forward to it. Awesome. Jyoti Asundi (1:01:45) Yes. Aarati Asundi (1:01:46) Thanks for listening. If you have a suggestion for a story we should cover or thoughts you want to share about an episode, reach out to us at smarteapodcast.com. You can follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and Blue Sky @smartteapodcast, and listen to us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. And leave us a rating or comment. It helps us grow. New episodes are released every other Wednesday. See you next time!