Satyendranath Bose or more popularly known as S.N.Bose. Well known for the Bose-Einstein condensate theory. And also a class of particles called Bosons named after him by Paul Dirac. One of the great scientists of modern era.

But then again to call S.N.Bose just a scientist, would be akin to calling Leonardo Da Vinci a mere painter. Much like his other namesake and contemporary, J.C.Bose, he was a polymath, equally adept in music, literature,mineralogy.

The multi facted genius was born on January 1, 1894 in a middle class Kolkata family, his father Surendranath Bose, an accountant in the East India Railway Company. The only son in a family that had six daughters after him.

Bought up by his mother Amodini Devi, he later joined the New Indian School in the Goabagan neigbhorhood of Kolkata. Seeing his skills at mathematics, his father encouraged him more by giving problems to solve.

Joining the prestigious Hindu School in 1907 at the age of 13, he soon got recognition as an oustanding student in maths and science. His maths teacher, believed he could be the next Pierre Laplace.

Soon he joined Kolkata’s prestigious Presidency College, and majored in Applied Mathematics. Again proving to be an outstanding student, graduating in 1913 with distinction. He also learnt German and French, that helped him to read scientific works in those languages.

Bose entry into the world of Academia, was not an easy intiation for him. With World War I breaking out in 1914 all over Europe, scientific journals began to arrive less frequently. This just at a time, when quantum theory, relativity was arriving as a new field of study.

Add to that, Kolkata University was still in a nascent stage adopting PhD programs. However the then Vice Chancellor, Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee, father of Dr.Shyam Prasad Mukherjee, began to spend funds in establishing professorships and new programs.

He also gave scholarships for post graduates, and access to his own private library that had some of the best works on science and mathematics. Bose along with his friend Meghnad Saha, managed to get some of the best books through Paul Bruhl, an Austrian physics teacher.

By 1916 end, he started giving applied mathematics lecturers and later in physics too. He was appointed to CV Raman Chair of Physics in 1917, and by 1919, along with Saha, published English translation of Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.

In 1921, he was appointed at the University of Dhaka as Physics Reader, where he made his most famous discovery. His derivation of Planck’s radiation law, a problem that had occupied the minds of some of the best physicists of that time.