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BOOK REVIEW
NAKUL PARASHAR
100 years of ʻThe Life and Work of
Sir Jagadis C Boseʼ
Sir Patrick Geddes
Why has a 260-page book written 100 years ago become all of a sudden so relevant now? Is it because it was written on one of the greatest scientists that India has produced so far? Is it because of its unique author, who was a biologist, an urban planner, and someone who travelled a large part of the world? Of course, much more than the reasons, this unique book is none other than the famous and one of the widely read biographies of a scientist – An Indian Pioneer of Science – The Life and Work of Sir Jagadis C Bose.
Written by Sir Patrick Geddes FRSE, this biography of Acharya J.C. Bose was published in October 1920 by Longmans Green & Co., UK. This book has nineteen chapters meticulously planned from childhood and early education to the establishment of the Bose Research Institute that later became the world-renowned Bose Institute, now an autonomous organisation of the Department of Science & Technology, Government of India.
Bose passed away in 1937 while Geddes died in 1932. This means that this biography was written seventeen years before Bose’s demise. Interestingly, the very few initial lines of the book say it all – “I am asked whether the title of this book means especially a pioneer in science in and for India. The answer is - both. For on one hand, Bose is the first India of modern times who has done distinguished work in science, and his life story is thus at once of interest to his scientific contemporaries in other countries and of encouragement and impulse to his countrymen”.
The book brings out different aspects of the life of the great scientific genius, Bose, as portrayed by yet another great scientist and town planner of modern times, Sir Patrick Geddes.
Geddes has weaved this book perfectly well. Describing Bose’s early days vividly, Geddes mentions – “The boy is the father of the man. Hence the writers of biographies have always sought to learn and tell they could of the early
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