PHYSICISTS from Bangladesh

Top 2

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Bangladeshi Physicists of all time. This list of famous Bangladeshi Physicists is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.

1. Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858 - 1937)

With an HPI of 61.40, Jagadish Chandra Bose is the most famous Bangladeshi Physicist.  His biography has been translated into 49 different languages on wikipedia.

Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose (; IPA: [dʒɔɡodiʃ tʃɔndro boʃu]; 30 November 1858 – 23 November 1937) was a polymath with interests in biology, physics, botany and writing science fiction. He was a pioneer in the investigation of radio microwave optics, made significant contributions to botany, and was a major force behind the expansion of experimental science on the Indian subcontinent. Bose is considered the father of Bengali science fiction. He invented the crescograph, a device for measuring the growth of plants. A crater on the Moon was named in his honour. He founded the Bose Institute, a premier research institute in India and also one of its oldest. Established in 1917, the institute was the first interdisciplinary research centre in Asia. He served as the Director of Bose Institute from its inception until his death. Born in Mymensingh, Bengal Presidency (Present-Day Bangladesh), during British governance of India, Bose graduated from St. Xavier's College, Calcutta (now Kolkata, West Bengal, India). Prior to his enrollment at St. Xavier's College, Calcutta, Bose attended Dhaka Collegiate School, where he began his educational journey. He attended the University of London to study medicine, but had to give it up due to health problems. Instead, he conducted research with Nobel Laureate, Lord Rayleigh at the University of Cambridge. Bose returned to India to join the Presidency College of the University of Calcutta as a professor of physics. There, despite racial discrimination and a lack of funding and equipment, Bose carried on his scientific research. He made progress in his research into radio waves in the microwave spectrum and was the first to use semiconductor junctions to detect radio waves. Bose made pioneering discoveries in plant physiology. He used his own invention, the crescograph, to measure plant response to various stimuli and proved parallelism between animal and plant tissues. Bose filed for a patent for one of his inventions because of peer pressure, but he was generally critical of the patent system. To facilitate his research, he constructed automatic recorders capable of registering extremely slight movements; these instruments produced some striking results, such as quivering of injured plants, which Bose interpreted as a power of feeling in plants. His books include Response in the Living and Non-Living (1902) and The Nervous Mechanism of Plants (1926). He spent the last years of his life in Giridih. Here he lived in the house located near Jhanda Maidan. This building was named Jagdish Chandra Bose Smriti Vigyan Bhavan. It was inaugurated on 28 February 1997 by then Governor of Bihar AR Kidwai. In a 2004 BBC poll to name the Greatest Bengali of all time, Bose placed seventh.

2. Meghnad Saha (1893 - 1956)

With an HPI of 53.59, Meghnad Saha is the 2nd most famous Bangladeshi Physicist.  His biography has been translated into 35 different languages.

Meghnad Saha (6 October 1893 – 16 February 1956) was an Indian astrophysicist who helped devise the theory of thermal ionisation. His Saha ionisation equation allowed astronomers to accurately relate the spectral classes of stars to their actual temperatures. Saha's equation is considered one of the ten most outstanding discoveries in astronomy and astrophysics since Galileo's invention of the telescope in 1608. He was elected as an independent member to the Parliament of India in 1952.