India-born American physicist-philanthropist, Mani Bhaumik has agreed to donate $ 1 million to honor the work of J C Bose, the Indian scientist whose work on wireless telegraphy was ignored for long by the West. A medal and an honorarium would be awarded to promising young scientists starting in 2025, according to a report in The Times of India.
Recognition and appreciation comes late to scientist and inventor Jagadish Chandra Bose, who invented the detector for wireless telegraphy. Italian inventor and engineer G Marconi used this for his historic demonstration of the first-ever trans-Atlantic radiotelegraphy and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. Since he did not mention Bose — without whose invention Marconi could not have won recognition and accolades –Bose’s vital contribution remained hidden. The failure to give credit to Bose has long irked scientists in India familiar with Bose’s work.
Efforts to publicly acknowledge the valuable contributions of Bose began when The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), located in New York City, placed a memorial plaque in Kolkata, at the Presidency College, now a university, where Bose came up with his ground-breaking invention. And now, with their intense lobbying and with special effort put in by Prof S V Sankaran of the Indian Institute of Science and Technology, Bengaluru, the IEEE has decided to establish a prestigious medal and award named the Jagadish Chandra Bose Medal. However, to sponsor the medal and award in perpetuity, IEEE needed to come up with one million US dollars. Mani Bhaumik has offered to donate the entire amount.
Bengal-born Mani Bhaumik, who lives in Los Angeles, holds numerous patents and is the inventor of the laser technology that paved the way for Lasik eye surgery. Bhaumik says he feels his domination is a way of paying back for all that he gained from his teacher and mentor, Satyendra Nath Bose of the Bose-Einstein statistics fame who was a student of J C Bose.
