Satyandra Nath Bose

Born Jan. 1, 1894, in Calcutta. Indian physicist; member of the London Royal Society since 1958. National Professor of India since 1958. Graduated from the University of Calcutta in 1915. Worked in Paris in 1924–25 under Marie Sklodowska Curie. Professor at the University of Dacca from 1926 to 1945 and in Calcutta from 1945 to 1956.

Bose’s most important work was in the founding of quantum statistics. He derived Planck’s formula for the distribution of energy emitted by an absolute blackbody on the basis of the assumption that two states of a system that differ by a permutation of identical quanta in a phase space are identical. Bose’s method was developed by A. Einstein, who applied it to an ideal gas, thereby laying the foundations of Bose-Einstein quantum statistics. Particles obeying those statistics are known as Bose particles or bosons.