Two weeks back West Bengal celebrated the birth anniversary of legendary Bengali scientist Megnad Saha, the man who gave the world the ‘Saha ions Theory’. Saha in fact is part of an illustrious Bengali heritage in the field of scientific enquiry and research. When you consider that Kolkata (then Calcutta) produced eminent, internationally acclaimed scientists such as Nobel Laureate Dr C.V.Raman, Jagadish Chandra Bose, Satyendranath Bose and Megnad Saha among others, you begin to wonder why the city was the last among Indian metros and not the first to set up an Information Technology Sector.

Kolkata was the capital of the British ruled India. It was also the seat of learning and culture. The Brahma Samaj movement in 19th century Kolkata, spearheaded by revolutionary reformers such as Ram Mohon Roy and Keshav Chunder Sen, provided the impetus to a flurry of scientific and literary activity amidst a climate of enlightenment and free thought.

Megnad Saha was born near Dhaka (now in Bangladesh) on the 6th October, 1893, to a poor family. A brilliant student, Megnad passed the Intermediate (Science) examinations in 1911 securing the third position. Another famous Bengali Physicist Satyendranth Bose, a contemporary of Saha, had stood first.

Both Saha and Satyen Bose enrolled in Presidency College, Kolkata with Mathematics Honours (Major). Both of them graduated in 1913 with top colours, Satyendranath once again securing the first position and Saha the second. They completed their M.Sc from Kolkata university, this time jointly bagging the first rank.

Saha attained international recognition when in 1919, the American Astrophysical Journal published his research paper "On Selective Radiation Pressure and its application", a pioneering work which contributed to the growth of astrophysics. Saha went abroad and researched in Imperial College, London and later, at a research laboratory in Germany. In 1927, Megnad was elected as a fellow of London's Royal Society. In 1947, he established in Kolkata an institute of Nuclear Physics. It was later renamed as the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics and conducts research on nuclear physics.

His friend and associate Satyendranath Bose was an extraordinary scientist, specializing in mathematical physics. Renowned for his contribution to quantum mechanics, his work in the early 1920s, provided the foundation for Bose-Einstein statistics and the
theory of the Bose-Einstein condensate. He is honored as the namesake of the  boson. Incidentally the sensational, $10 billion Large Hadron Collider experiment in Switzerland last month (September 2008) was also called 'Higgs-boson' experiment, after scientists  Peter Higgs and Satyendranath Bose.

Bose’s first article on theoretical physics, written in collaboration with Megnad Saha titled the ‘Equation of State’ was published in the 'Philosophical Magazine' in 1918. Now referred to by scientists as the 'Saha-Bose Equation', it deals with many aspects of the pressure, cubic measure and temperature of gases based on Einstein’s Relativity Theory. Even Einstein was impressed with the originality of Bose’s ideas.

Bose started his career in 1916 as a Lecturer in Physics in Calcutta University. In 1921 he joined Dacca (now Dhaka) university as a Reader. Supported by Dacca university, Bose visited Paris and worked in the Madame Currie laboratory. After a year in Paris, he left for Berlin where he came in touch with Einstein and other scientific luminaries like Schroedinger and Heisenberg. Bose returned to Dacca University as Professor of Physics and served here till 1945 hen he re-joined Kolkata University where he worked till his retirement in 1956. In 1958, Bose was made a Fellow of the Royal Society, London.

Yet another famous Bose, Sir Jagadish Chandra (November 30, 1858 – November 23, 1937) was a versatile genius who was considered by Neville Francis Mott, Nobel Laureate in 1977, to be at least 60 years ahead of his time. “It was J C Bose who had anticipated the existence of P-type and N-type semiconductors", Mott wrote. Considered one of the pioneers of radio science J C Bose was the first from the Indian subcontinent to get a US patent, in 1904. His interests ranged from radio physics to plant physiology.

After graduating from St Xavier’s College, Kolkata in 1879, J C Bose obtained a B.Sc degree from the University of London in 1884.He returned to India where he began teaching Physics in Presidency College, Kolkata. He also began his research work during this time.

He made remarkable progress in his research of remote wireless signaling and was the first to use semiconductor junctions to detect radio signals. It is claimed that Bose's demonstration of remote wireless signalling preceded the experiment carried out by Marconi. In 1954 Pearson and Brattain gave priority to Bose for the use of a semi-conducting crystal as a detector of radio waves.

J C Bose also made some path-breaking discoveries in plant physiology. He invented the crescograph to measure plant response to various stimuli. He made a scientific, comparative study of the nature and functions of animal and plant tissues. J.C. Bose was elected Fellow of the Royal Society on May 13, 1920.

Legendary physicist Dr Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, who conducted most of his research in Kolkata at the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, was one of India’s greatest scientists. Raman was awarded the Nobel prize in 1930 for his pioneering work on the molecular scattering of light and for the discovery of the Raman effect, named after him. February 28 is observed in India as Science day in his honour.

Raman hailed from Tiruchirapalli in Tamilnadu. He graduated from Presidency College, Chennai (then Madras) in 1904 and obtained M Sc with distinction in 1907. He joined as the Assistant Accountant General in the Indian Finance Department in Kolkata. This was the time when he regularly visited the IACS and began his research work. In 1917 Raman left his government job to and became professor of physics in Calcutta University.

He also put forward the theory of transverse vibration of bowed strings, on the basis of superposition velocities. Raman also investigated the harmonic nature of the sound produced by traditional Indian drums such as the mridangam and the tabla.

The illustrious scientist was, knighted in 1929, elected as the Fellow of the Royal Society early in 1924 and awarded the Bharat Ratna and the Lenin Peace Prize in 1957. Raman later confessed that his research days in Kolkata constituted the prime of his life.

That Kolkata was a prime centre for science, culture and learning is indicated by the fact that all Indian Nobel Laureates either hailed from the city or accomplished. their main work here. Few in the city would deny Kokata’s decline since then, as today, it remains a shadow of its past glory. X