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Jagadish Chandra Bose a plant physiologist
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Jagadish Chandra Bose was a physicist, biologist, botanist and a pioneer in the field of radio and microwave optics and made very significant contributions to plant physiology. He was able to show the similarities between the behavioral response of plant and animal tissue. He had laid the foundations of experimental science in the Indian Subcontinent. Born in Mymensingh, Bengal (Eastern India and now Bangladesh) during the colonial rule in India, graduated from St Xavier’s College, Calcutta, and joined Presidency College of University of Calcutta as a Professor of Physics. He retired and then founded the Bose Research Institute, the first scientific research institute in India.
While he was teaching in Presidency College, he conducted various researches in the field of plant physiology. He had forwarded a theory for the ascent of sap in plants in 1927, which contributed to the vital theory of ascent of sap. According to his theory electromechanical pulsations of living cells were responsible for the ascent in plants. There were several mechanisms to explain the phenomenon but none were satisfactory. The most recently proposed theory the “CP theory “favors a version of the ascent of sap theory proposed by Bose.
Jagadish Chandra Bose was able to demonstrate the minute movements of plants to external stimuli and was able to measure the rate of plant growth, by devising extremely sensitive instruments. His research convinced him that there were no clear cut boundaries between the nervous systems of plants and of animals. He invented the Crescograph, an instrument for magnifying the movements of growth in plants 10 million times. His experiments showed that plants grow faster in pleasant music and their growth is retarded in noise or harsh sound, which was later experimentally validated by the scientists.
The validity of Bose’s experiments was often questioned because of his experimental techniques and the mystical, religious implications he found in his research. His implications were that like animals even plants can adjust change through “inherited memory of the past”. According to him there was no line that can be drawn between plants and animals and as well as between living and non-living matter. He felt that he had substantiated in the laboratory the Hindu religious belief that the whole universe was an aspect of the Eternal one.
Bose was also credited for his invention of radio and microwave optics and will be discussed in the next article.
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