Jagadish Chandra Bose: The first modern scientist by Dilip M. Salwi, Rupa & Co, Rs 95, ISBN 8171676812
THIS pocket-size book starts off with a great bang: Bose’s demonstration of the transmission of radio waves in 1895 at the Town Hall in Calcutta. An enthusiastic experimenter, he had hooked up a model cannon, a pistol and a charge of gunpowder to a receiver in one room, with a transmitter several rooms distant. The British Lieutenant Governor was invited to throw a switch, whereupon the cannon and pistol fired and the gunpowder exploded.
He was originally sent to England to become a…
