Sir yagadis Bose 29 



young, yet one who has heard him lecture says of him 

 that his expression " exhales a spirit of sheer beauty, 

 especially when he talks.' ' He began life as a poor 

 university professor, but his work attracted the attention 

 of Sir James Dewar and Lord Rayleigh, who brought 

 him to England to work in Faraday's laboratory at the 

 Royal Institution. 



He worked there to such purpose that even the popular 

 newspapers and magazines recorded the wonders he 

 achieved. Then he went back to India, where he has 

 toiled alone for more than twenty years. Disturbingly 

 alone, for among India's three hundred millions he has 

 been the only man working on these special lines. He has 

 had not a soul in the whole Indian Empire with whom to 

 discuss his ideas and experiments. 



In 1926 he was back in England, lecturing before the 

 British Association at Oxford, where the great Einstein 

 himself was in the audience. When the lecture was over 

 Einstein solemnly declared that Bose ought to have a 

 statue erected in his honour in the capital of the League 

 of Nations. 



And why was Einstein so impressed ? Why is it that 

 Bose's name is now known, not merely in the laboratories, 

 but all over the world ? It is because he has proved that 

 all life is one. By actual experiment he has shown that 

 steel and other metals can feel, that plants have emotions, 

 and that everything created lives and dies. 



Bose has not done this merely by watching plants 

 through a magnifying glass. He has invented whole sets 

 of delicate instruments for measuring the nervous reflexes 

 of plants. He has been called a mystic, but he is a mystic 

 who measures his visions to the millionth of an inch. He 

 may have the imagination of the East, but to this he 

 adds the cold precision of the Western man of science. 



Yet his discoveries are so marvellous that it is difficult 

 to believe them. They seem to be far more like fairy 



