History of the Calcutta School of Physical Sciences by Purabi Mukherji & Atri Mukhopadhyay

Author:Purabi Mukherji & Atri Mukhopadhyay
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer Singapore, Singapore

3.2 Research and Teaching

During that time, Sir Asutosh Mookerjee was the Vice-Chancellor of Calcutta University. In 1914, when Bose returned to Calcutta, Sir Asutosh recruited him as the Rash Behary Ghose Professor in the newly set up Physics Department of the university. The same year, Bose was awarded the Ghose Travelling Fellowship for pursuing higher studies abroad. He first went to Berlin, which was then the most vibrant place for doing research in Physics. He joined the laboratory of E. Regener (1881–1955), who had earned fame for the design and construction of instruments to measure cosmic ray intensity at various altitudes.

It was also the time the First World War broke out in Europe. Consequently, Bose was confined in Germany for nearly five years. However, his academic pursuits did not suffer and he continued his researches and got involved with the construction of a new kind of Wilson cloud chamber. Using the cloud chamber, he recorded the tracks of ionising alpha and beta particles from radioactive sources. His training under Professor C.T.R. Wilson turned out to be extremely useful; it helped him build a new cloud chamber. Using it, he successfully photographed the tracks of recoil protons produced during the passage of fast-moving alpha particles in a hydrogen-filled chamber. The results of the experiment provided verification of C.G. Darwin’s (1887–1962) formula for interaction effects of a collision between fast-moving charged particles with a hydrogen molecule. Bose also successfully photographed the recoil tracks of delta particles that were discovered by H.A. Bumstead (1870–1920). The preliminary results of this experiment were published in German. The full and complete research paper comprising these findings was also published in German. The first one was published in 1916 in Physikalische Zeitschrift, and the second one was published in 1922 in Z Physics.

Fig. 3.1D.M. Bose with Bidhan Chandra Roy, Padmaja Naidu and Jawaharlal Nehru in Jagadish Chandra Bose Centenary celebration

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