BOSE, SIR JAGADIS CHUNDER Indian physicist. After graduating from St. Xavier's college, Calcutta, he entered Christ's college, Cambridge, gaining high honours in 1884. In 1885 he became professor of physical science at the Presidency college, Calcutta. His first appearance before the British Association at Liverpool in 2896 was to demonstrate an apparatus for studying the properties of electric waves almost identical with the coherers subsequently used in all systems of wireless. He also invented an instrument for verifying the laws of refraction, reflection and polarization of electric waves.
His discovery of a parallelism in the behaviour of the receiver to the living muscle led him to a systematic study of the response of inorganic matter as well as animal tissues and plants to various kinds of stimulus. After laborious researches he proved to the satisfaction of various scientific bodies that the life mechanism of the plant is identical with that of the animal. His crescograph is a recorder of plant growth capable of magnifying a small move ment as much as ten million times. In 1915 he became professor emeritus of the Presidency college and thereupon devoted himself to founding the research institute in Calcutta which bears his name. He was knighted in 1917 and was a frequent visitor in Europe and America. He died in Giridih, Bengal, Nov. 23, See Patrick Geddes, The Life and Work of Sir Jagadis C. Bose (192o) and Sir J. C. Bose: His Life and Speeches (Madras, 192o).