Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose: His Life and Speeches (Dodo Press)

Sir Jagadish/Jagadis Chandra/Chunder Bose, CSI, CIE, FRS (1858-1937) was a Bengali polymath: a physicist, biologist, botanist, archaeologist, and writer of science fiction. Born in Bengal during the British Raj, Bose graduated from St. Xavier's College, Calcutta. He then went to the University of London to study medicine, but couldn't complete his studies due to health problems. He returned to India and joined the Presidency College of University of Calcutta as a Professor of Physics. There, despite racial discrimination and a lack of funding and equipment, Bose carried on his scientific research. He pioneered the investigation of radio and microwave optics, made very significant contributions to plant science, and laid the foundations of experimental science in the Indian subcontinent. He used his own invention, the crescograph, to measure plant response to various stimuli, and thereby scientifically proved parallelism between animal and plant tissues. He is considered one of the fathers of radio science, and is also considered the father of Bengali science fiction. He was the first from the Indian subcontinent to get a US patent, in 1904.