Jagadish Chandra Bose

Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose, ( died on 23 November 1937), also spelled Jagdish and Jagadis, was a Bengali polymath, physicist, biologist, biophysicist, botanist and archaeologist, and an early writer of science fiction.  Living in British India, he pioneered the investigation of radio and microwave optics, made significant contributions to plant science, and laid the foundations of experimental science in the Indian subcontinent.

IEEE named him one of the fathers of radio science.  Bose is considered the father of Bengali science fiction, and also invented the crescograph, a device for measuring the growth of plants. A crater on the moon has been named in his honour.

Born in Munshiganj, Bengal Presidency during the British Raj (present-day Bangladesh),  Bose graduated from St. Xavier's College, Calcutta. He went to the University of London to study medicine, but could not pursue studies in medicine because of health problems. Instead, he conducted his research with the Nobel Laureate Lord Rayleigh at Cambridge and returned to India.

Bose went to London on a lecture tour in 1896 and met Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi, who had been developing a radio wave wireless telegraphy system for over a year and was trying to market it to the British post service. In an interview, Bose expressed his disinterest in commercial telegraphy and suggested others use his research work. In 1899, Bose announced the development of a "iron-mercury-iron coherer with telephone detector" in a paper presented at the Royal Society, London.