PREFACE vii 



new and strange devices and apparatus, the impression 

 gradually faded. And only in the last two or three years, 

 in Calcutta and at Darjeeling, have I gradually come to 

 know more and more of Bose and of his researches, of 

 his Institute, and of its aims. 



All the sciences and all their scientific men are 

 social products, and must be studied as such in the 

 sociological way. This book, though originally planned 

 in its simplest and most direct aspect and purpose 

 as an exposition of a life-work is thus something of a 

 sociological study also ; and as such, one of its purposes 

 that of incentive to encouragement and emancipation 

 of the student, of science in general, and in India in par- 

 ticular may be more clear. For here is, at any rate, no 

 conventional rhapsody on a ' genius/ but an endeavour 

 to see what may be the conditions favourable to life and 

 conducive to full mental stature and productivity ; and 

 what the adverse conditions which may arrest, yet may 

 also provoke to, their surmounting. And it is this latter 

 which I wished to make specially clear from the study of 

 Bose's life, so that others also may be encouraged to face 

 their difficulties, and to overcome them as far as may be, 

 towards something greater than merely individual end. 



Enough then of preface. Any dedication should be 

 to those in memory or still with us, who as we shall find 

 have best helped the hero of this tale upon his life's 

 adventure. Nor should we forget his old teachers, his 

 friends and fellow-workers in science, nor yet his assistants 

 and pupils, by whom his work has also henceforth in- 

 creasingly to be continued ; nor that active youth of the 

 Indian Universities to whom it is so largely addressed. 



P. G. 







JERUSALEM, 1920. 



