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{{Short description|Indian physicist (1885–1975)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=February 2020}}
{{Use Indian English|date=September 2018}}
{{More citations needed|date=July 2020}}
{{Infobox scientist
| name = Debendra Mohan Bose
| image = M N Saha, J C Bose, J C Ghosh, Snehamoy Dutt, S N Bose, D M Bose, N R Sen, J N Mukherjee, N C Nag.jpg
| image_size =
| caption = Debendra Mohan Bose (standing, third from left) with other scientists of Calcutta University
| birth_date = {{Birth date|1885|11|26|df=y}}
| birth_place = [[Calcutta]], [[Bengal Presidency]], [[British Raj|British India]] (modern-day [[Kolkata, West Bengal]], India)
| death_date = {{Death date and age|1975|06|2|1885|11|26|df=y}}
| death_place = Calcutta, West Bengal, India
| fields = [[Particle physics]] [[Nuclear physics]] [[Radiochemistry]]
| workplaces = [[University of Calcutta]] [[Cavendish Laboratory]] [[University of Berlin]] [[Bose Institute]]
| alma_mater = [[University of Calcutta]] [[University of Berlin]]
| doctoral_advisor = [[Erich Regener]]
| academic_advisors = [[Jagadish Chandra Bose]] [[J. J. Thomson]]
| notable_students =
| known_for =
| footnotes =
| spouse = Nalini Sircar (1919-1975)
| prizes =
}}
'''Debendra Mohan Bose''' (26 November 1885 – 2 June 1975) was an Indian physicist who made contributions in the field of [[cosmic ray]]s, artificial radioactivity and neutron physics.<ref>{{cite book
| title = Biographical memoirs of fellows of the Indian National Science Academy, Volume 7
| author = Indian National Science Academy
| year = 1983
}}</ref> He was the longest serving Director (1938–1967) of [[Bose Institute]].<ref name="science_and_culture_76">{{cite journal
| title = D. M. Bose: A Scientist Incognito (editorial)
| volume = 76
| issue = 11–12
| journal = Science and Culture
| date=November–December 2010
| url = http://www.scienceandculture-isna.org/Nov-Dec-10/Editorial.pdf
| access-date = 5 February 2011
}}</ref> Bose was the nephew of the famous physicist [[Jagadish Chandra Bose]], who laid the foundations of modern science in India.

== Education in Europe ==

In 1907, he joined the [[Christ's College, Cambridge]], and worked with prominent physicists including [[J. J. Thomson]] and [[Charles Thomson Rees Wilson]] at the [[Cavendish Laboratory]]. In 1910, he joined the [[Royal College of Science]] in London, from where he obtained a diploma and a BSc (first class) in Physics in 1912. Later, he returned to Calcutta and taught physics in the [[City College, Kolkata]] in 1913.

In 1914, D M Bose was appointed the Rashbehary Ghosh Professor of Physics in the newly founded Calcutta University College of Science. He was awarded the Ghosh Travel Fellowship for studying abroad, and chose to study advanced physics for two years at the [[Humboldt University]] in Berlin. In Berlin, Debendra was assigned to Professor [[Erich Regener]]'s laboratory. His stay in Germany got extended to five years due to [[World War I]]. During this period, he worked on the development of a new type of [[cloud chamber]], and was successful in photographing the tracks of recoil protons produced during the passage of fast moving [[alpha particle]]s in the chamber. The results of his preliminary investigations were published in the journal ''[[Physikalische Zeitschrift]]'' in 1916 (a full paper was later published in ''[[Zeitschrift für Physik]]'' in 1922). He returned to India in March 1919 after obtaining a PhD.

== Early life ==

Debendra Mohan Bose was born in Calcutta in a famous [[Brahmo]] family. He was the youngest son of Mohini Mohan Bose, one of the first Indians to proceed to U.S.A to qualify himself in homeopathy. [[Ananda Mohan Bose]] was his paternal uncle, while [[Jagadish Chandra Bose]] was his maternal uncle.<ref name="shaping_indian_1948_1981">{{cite book
| title = The Shaping of Indian Science: 1948-1981
| author = Indian Science Congress Association
| publisher = Universities Press
| year = 2003
| isbn = 978-81-7371-433-7
| pages = 702–703
}}</ref> After his father's untimely death, Debendra's education was supervised by his uncle J C Bose.

Debendra's plan of getting a degree in engineering from the [[Bengal Engineering College, Shibpur]] was cut short when he suffered a severe [[malaria]] attack. Nobel laureate [[Rabindranath Tagore]], a close friend of J C Bose, suggested him to pursue physics instead. In 1906, Debendra Bose obtained his MA degree from the [[University of Calcutta]] in first class. He worked as a research scholar under J C Bose for one year, during which he participated in his uncle's biophysical and plant physiological investigations.<ref name="shaping_indian_1948_1981"/>

== As an academic ==

In July 1919, DM Bose re-joined the Calcutta University as Rashbehary Ghosh Professor of Physics. In 1932, he succeeded Professor [[C. V. Raman]] as the [[Palit Professor of Physics]]. He was one of the only two Indian physicists (the other being [[M. N. Saha]]) who participated at the Como conference (11–20 September 1927) held at [[Lake Como]] in Italy. The conference featured 60 invited participants from 14 countries, including 11 Nobel laureates.<ref name="science_and_culture_76"/>

DM Bose encouraged several of his junior colleagues at the Calcutta University to pursue research. He gave [[Satyendra Nath Bose]] two books of Max Planck, Thermodynamik and Warmestrahlung (unavailable in India then). This led to SN Bose's interest in Planck's hypothesis and his deduction on a combinatorial basis of Planck's formula in 1925.<ref name="science_and_culture_76"/>

In 1938, DM Bose became the Director of Bose Institute after the death of the institute's founder JC Bose. In 1945, Bose was inducted as a nuclear chemistry expert in the Atomic Energy Committee of CSIR. The committee later became the [[United States Atomic Energy Commission|Atomic Energy Commission]] (AEC).<ref name="science_and_culture_76"/>

== Research with Biva Choudhuri ==

A discussion during the 1938 [[Indian Science Congress Association|Science Congress Session]] prompted D. M. Bose and his colleague [[Bibha Chowdhuri]]<ref>For more detail see, Rajinder Singh, S.C. Roy (https://www.shaker.de/de/content/catalogue/index.asp?lang=de&ID=8&ISBN=978-3-8440-6126-0&search=yes</ref> to study [[cosmic rays]] using [[photographic plate]]s. Since the [[particle accelerator]]s were not available at this time, high-energy subatomic particles were only obtainable from atmospheric cosmic rays. [[Walther Bothe]] gave the duo the idea of considering [[photographic emulsion]] as a continuously active cloud chamber to register and store tracks.

Due to the [[World War II]] restrictions, full tone photographic plates were not available in India at that time. During 1939–1942, Bose and Choudhuri exposed [[Ilford Photo|Ilford]] [[half-tone]] photographic plates in the high altitude mountainous regions of [[Darjeeling]], and observed long curved ionizing tracks that appeared to be different from the tracks of alpha particles or protons. In a series of articles published in ''[[Nature (journal)|Nature]]'', they identified a cosmic particle having an average mass close to 200 times the mass of electron.<ref name="science_and_culture_76"/> Their research came to an end when Choudhuri left India in 1945 to work with [[Patrick Blackett, Baron Blackett|Patrick Blackett]] in England.

In Europe, [[Cecil Frank Powell]] independently used exactly the same method to identify the new particle [[pi-meson]] (now pion), but with improved full-tone photographic emulsion plates. He was awarded the [[Nobel Prize in Physics]] in 1950 "for his development of the photographic method of studying nuclear processes and his discoveries regarding mesons made with this method".<ref>{{cite web
| url = http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1950/
| title = The Nobel Prize in Physics 1950
| publisher = Nobelprize.org (Nobel Media)
| access-date = 6 February 2011
}}</ref> Powell acknowledge the method developed by Bose and Choudhuri as the first attempt in this field in his 1959 book ''The Study of Elementary Particles by the Photographic Method''.<ref>{{cite book
| title = The Study of Elementary Particles by the Photographic Method
| url = https://archive.org/details/studyofelementar0000powe
| url-access = registration
| author = Cecil Frank Powell
| publisher = Pergamon Press
| year = 1959
| oclc = 2404250
}}</ref>

== Later life ==

As director of the Bose Institute, D M Bose expanded the activities of the existing departments and also opened the new department of microbiology. He was a dedicated worker of the [[Sadharan Brahmo Samaj]] and was served several years as its office bearer (President, Secretary & Treasurer). He was the General President of the [[Indian Science Congress Association|Indian Science Congress Session]] in 1953 at Lucknow. Bose served as the director of the Bose Institute till 1967, when his [[arthritis]] and other health problems forced him to take retirement. In the later years of his life, he became more interested in philosophy focusing on the [[relationship between religion and science]].<ref name="shaping_indian_1948_1981"/> He died on the morning of 2 June 1975.

===Como Conference - S.N. Bose vs. D.M. Bose===

In 1927, at the occasion of the 100th death anniversary of Italian physicist [[Alessandro Volta]], in Como, a conference was organized (as mentioned above). D.M. Bose and M.N. Saha participated. In the late 1980s it was reported that the "wrong" Bose, that is, D.M. Bose attended the meeting. The invitation was supposed to be for S.N. Bose. The historical documents suggest that D.M. Bose was not the "wrong" person, because in those days his national and international status was far better than that of S.N. Bose.<ref>Rajinder Singh, Celebrating 125th birth anniversary of DM Bose - Invitation to the Como conference, Science and Culture 76, 494-501, 2010.</ref><ref>Rajinder Singh: D.M. Bose - His scientific work in international context, Shaker Publisher, Aachen 2016. [http://www.shaker.de/de/content/catalogue/index.asp?lang=de&ID=8&ISBN=978-3-8440-4619-9&search=yes DM Bose Scientific work]</ref>

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

== External links ==
* http://scientificman.com/2013/01/19/a-tribute-to-debendra-mohan-bose-the-unknown-indian-who-missed-the-nobel-prize/

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bose, Debendra Mohan}}
[[Category:19th-century Indian physicists]]
[[Category:Bengali scientists]]
[[Category:Brahmos]]
[[Category:Scientists from Kolkata]]
[[Category:1885 births]]
[[Category:1975 deaths]]
[[Category:University of Calcutta alumni]]
[[Category:Alumni of the Royal College of Science]]
[[Category:University of Calcutta faculty]]
[[Category:City College, Kolkata faculty]]
[[Category:Presidents of The Asiatic Society]]
[[Category:20th-century Indian physicists]]

Debendra Mohan Bose - Revision history

>Wheel Blast 722 at 09:27, 2 July 2021