Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose | Page 2

were hardy sons of toilers and of others who, it is now fashion to regard, were belonging to the depressed classes."[3] Speaking of the effect it produced on him, observes Sir Jagadis "From these who tilled the ground and made the land blossom with green verdure and ripening corn, and the sons of the fisher folk, who told stories of the strange creatures that frequented unknown depths of mighty rivers and stagnant pools, I first derived the lesson of that which constitutes true manhood. From them too I drew my love of nature."[3]
"I now realise" continues Sir Jagadis "the object of my being sent at the most plastic period of my life to the vernacular school where I was to learn my own thoughts and to receive the heritage of our national culture through the medium of our own literature. I was thus to consider myself one with the people and never to place myself in an equivocal position of assumed superiority."[3]
"The moral education which we received in our childhood" adds Sir Jagadis "was very indirect and came from listening to stories recited by the "Kathaks" on various incidents connected with our great epics. Their effects on our mind was Very great."[4]
And it is very interesting to learn from the lips of Sir Jagadis himself "that the inventive bent of his mind received its first impetus" in the industrial and technical schools established by his father.[4]
HIS COLLEGIATE EDUCATION IN INDIA
After he had developed, in the pathsala, some power of observation, some power of reasoning and some power of expression through the healthy medium of his own mother tongue, young Jagadis was sent to an English School for education. He passed the Entrance Examination, in 1875, from the St. Xavier's Collegiate School, Calcutta, in the First Division. He then joined the College classes of that Institution, and there, in the "splendid museum of Physical Science Instruments," he drew his early inspirations in Physics from that remarkable educationist and brilliant experimentalist, the Rev. Father E. Lefont, S.J., C.I.E., M.I.E.E., who had the rare gift of enkindling the imagination of his pupils. He passed the First Examination in Arts, in 1877, in the Second Division and the B.A. Examination by the B. Course (Science Course), in 1880, in the Second Division. "It is the paramount duty of the University" says Sir Ashutosh Mookerjea "to discover and develop unusual talent."[5] The Calcutta University, by the test of examination which it applied, totally failed to discover (not to speak of developing) the powers of an original mind which was destined to enrich the world by giving away the fruits of its experience.
HIS STUDY ABROAD
After Jagadis had graduated himself, in the Calcutta University, he longed to get a course of scientific education in England. He was sent to Cambridge and joined the Christ's College. He came in "personal contact with eminent men, whose influence extorted his admiration and created in him a feeling of emulation. In the way he owed a great deal to Lord Rayleigh, under whom he worked."[6] He passed the B.A. Examination of the Cambridge University, in Natural Science Tripos, in 1884. He also secured, in 1883, the B.Sc. Degree with Honours of London University. Jagadis had, by birth, the speculative Indian mind. And, by his scientific education, at home and abroad, he developed a capacity for accurate experiment and observation and learnt to control his Imagination--"that wonderous faculty which, left to ramble uncontrolled leads us astray into a wilderness of perplexities and errors, a land of mists and shadows; but which, properly controlled by experience and reflection, becomes the noblest attribute of man; the source of poetic genius, the instrument of discovery in Science."[7] His strength and fertility as a discoverer is to be referred in a great measure to the harmonious blending of the burning Imagination of the East with the analytical methods of the West.
APPOINTED AS A PROFESSOR
After having completed his education abroad. Jagadis chose the teaching of Science as his vocation. He was appointed as Professor of Physical Science at the Presidency College, Calcutta. He joined the service on the 7th January, 1885. Although he was appointed in Class IV of the then Bengal Educational Service, (which afterwards merged in the present Indian Educational Service), he was not admitted to the full scale of pay of the Service. He, being an Indian, was allowed to draw only two-thirds the pay of his grade. This humiliating distinction was, however, removed in his case, on the 21st September 1903, when the bureaucracy could not any longer ignore the pressure of enlightened opinion that was brought to bear on it.
HIS RESEARCHES ON ELECTRIC WAVES
It was in 1887, some times after Professor J. C. Bose had joined the Presidency College, Hertz demonstrated, by direct experiment, the existence of Electric Waves--the properties of which