One of India’s most remarkable academics, Sir Jagadis Chandra Bose, was born in 1858 in Bengal.

Next week the High Commissioner of India His Excellency Shiv Shankar Mukherjee will be guest of honour at a special symposium at Christ’s College to mark the 150th anniversary of his birth.

A distinguished alumnus of the college, where he studied Natural Sciences, Jagadis Chandra Bose was a true polymath: a physicist, biologist, botanist, archaeologist and a writer of science fiction.

Considered the father of radio science, he was the first person in the world to demonstrate wireless transmission of electromagnetic waves after retunring to India in 1885

He then moved on to study plant physiology in which he demonstrated how plants responded to various stimuli as if they had nervous systems like those of animals, claiming they could feel pain and understand affection..

In 1898 Bose wrote Niruddesher Kahini, becoming the first science fiction writer in the Bengali language.

He was knighted in 1917, made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1920, was a member of the League of Nations’ Committee for Intellectual Cooperation and was a founding Fellow of what is now the Indian National Science Academy.

“Beyond Boundaries: from Physics to Plant Sciences”, on Saturday 6 December at Christ’s College, will celebrate his extraordinary achievements with non-specialist lectures from eight distinguished academics from Cambridge and India.

For further details and booking please click the link on the top right of this page.

 

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