Preface Satyen Bose is perhaps one of the most tragic figures of Bengali Science. If you think of all the great things that the Bengalees have done in literature, science, arts, architecture and even politics, you will hardly find a name which is uttered more frequently throughout the world of sciences and yet the recognition that he received from his own people during his life time is not something that we can be proud of. Perhaps he paid the penalty for leaving Calcutta, choosing to come to the newly created University of Dhaka and thus condemning himself forever to be an outsider to the cultural milieu and scientific establishment of the then Bengal.
Imagine a youngman starting his career in the invigorating atmosphere of the Science college of Caltutta, suddenly deciding to go to remote Dhaka holding on to his precious copy of Planck's Vorlesungen uber die Theorie der Warmestralung. Imagine him trying to tell his still younger students coming from the peasant families of Bengal about his dissatisfaction with Planck's derivattion of the quantum distribution law. How did his young listeners in Dhaka react when he told them that he had found a new derivation using Einstein's famous relation for the photon momentum which was only the second time then that this relation was used anywhere in the world? Not only that. The photons of Planck and Einstein were, according to the daring bose, indistinguishable from each other because they could cluster together in groups in little cells whose number he could count in a remarkably novel way, thus leading to a new and completely satisfactory derivation of Plank's quantum law. This indeed was inspired work of the highest order.
Bose accomplished this all by himself sitting in his room in the Curzon Hall. When I think of him in our Department seventy years ago, I am struck by this olympian loneliness never experienced by another scientific genius anywhere in the would. Perhaps to persons like Einstein and Bose, It is immaterial where they work, Patent Office, Bern or Ramna, Bacca but for posterity it matters a great deal. This was the beginning of the Department of Physics of the University of Dhaka.
But it was also the beginning of much more. Here in this ancient capital of Bengal, Imperceptible a new nation was slowly taking shape out of the thousand years of struggle of the Bengali people and it is a measure of the greatness of satyen Bose that he implicitly understood his historical role and spent all his life amongst the people that he loved.
It is therefore, most appropriate that on the occasion of his Hundredth Birth Anniversary, The University of Dhaka is bringing out the collected works of `Satyen Bose at dhaka' The Bangladesh Physical Society has also organised an in an International Seminar and workshop on Bose Statistics and the Recent Advances in Physics with generous financial assistance from the University of Dhaka, the international Centre for theoretical Physics at trieste, Universities Grants Commission, Ministry of Science and the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. We are deeply Grateful for their kindness ad help.
The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Dhaka, Professor Emajuddin Ahmed Enthusiastically Supported the idea of Publishing the Collected works of Bose and it is because of his encouragement that we diligently looked for all the published papers of Bose in our wonderful Science Library. We are grateful to Mr. Ruhul Amin, the Deputy Librarian for patiently locating all the journals containing Bose's Papers. Professor M R Choudhury of the Department of Mathematics found out for us Bose's Paper with Vijayaraghavan and we are deeply grateful to him. The Registrar of the University, Mr. A. Z. Sikdar, rendered invaluable help first by allowing me to go through the personal file of Professor Bose and secondly by shouldering the entire administrative reponsibility for the publication of the collected works. I have no words to express my gratefulness to him. Special thanks are also due to Mr. Nurul Islam, our energetic P.R.O., who has always been source of strength in our efforts to make the University known in the scientific world.
I am also grateful to Mr. Syed Abdul Karim of the Dhanshish Mudrayon who understood the historical importance of the work right from the beginning and has tirelessly endeavoured to produce a book that will be worthy of the name of Bose as well as of the University of Dhaka. His difficulty was to reproduce Bose's Papers from old journals whose pages have become frail and discoloured but I believe that he has done a very good job considering the circumstances. I am also grateful to Zerina Begum, Zulfiqar Hafiz and Nurul Islam of the Computer Centre of the University for the Excellent typing of my article.
This book is more an attempt to know our own heritage than a tribute to Bose and if it inspires our younger generation to live up to his legacy, we will feel our efforts well justified.
A. M. Harun ar Rashid Department of Physics Curzon Hall University of Dhaka 5-12-1994
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