This is a remarkable episode in the History of Science in India. It's a shame that it is rarely featured among 'achievements' in any inventory of India's past and even rarer that this is seriously taught! Saha and Bose realised very quickly that in the early 20th Century.. https://twitter.com/Astro_Neel/status/1277434173494419457

German was the lingua franca of International Science and set out to learn German largely on their own. They were helped by Bruhl an Austrian who settled in India due to the weather and taught Botany at Calcutta University. In all likelihood they got the German journals...

containing papers about the 'New Physics' from him. But most of their science in German came from D M Bose who had gone to Germany before the Great War and was stuck interred there as he was a member of the British Empire. After the war Bose came back to Calcutta with loads of..

journals and books in German. They contained the latest research in Theoretical Physics. Einstein's GTR also came with that lot. By then both Saha and Bose had learnt enough German to translate the GTR. Also to add, when news of Eddington's confirmation of Einstein's...

prediction in the GTR reached Calcutta, the Statesman asked Saha to write a piece explaining the significance of the event. The history of science in India has always been deeply interconnected with larger global networks of science. To claim exclusiveness is tantamount to..

claiming insularity and disingenuous. The practice and science/knowledge has always been a result of exchanges, transmissions and transformations. This is the foundation to any robust and honest history of science.