|
Panelists: Hasan Padamsee and Falguni Sarkar Moderators: Gautam and Jayanti Bandyopadhyay  Hasan Padamsee is a retired professor of Physics from Cornell University with awards in the field of Particle Accelerators. He obtained his Ph.D. from Northeastern U., Boston. He has been a playwright and musical librettist for 15 years. Besides Bengal to Berlin – Birth of the Boson, his plays are Creation’s Birthday, Quantum Lovers, and the Ultimate Quest. His musicals are Einstein’s Love Story, Alice in Quantum Wonderland, and Hubble. His works have been produced at Entertaining Science in Greenwich Village, NY, the Athenaeum Theatre in Chicago, the Chicago Amateur Astronomy Convention, and his musical about Einstein at the City Lit Theatre in Chicago. [email protected]
 Gautam Bandyopadhyay is a retired technology and innovation management professional with more than 45 years’ experience in National Lab and multinational corporations. His early education was in Presidency college, Calcutta and University of Calcutta, followed by graduate studies (M.S. and Ph.D.) in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. Current hobbies include paying forward through teaching, guiding and mentoring industrial, non-profit and university student project teams in miscellaneous disciplines as well as writing on his life experiences.
0 Comments
Einstein's death shattered Bose...Readers and viewers of this site, and followers of S.N. Bose know that if one had to name just one person who has done more to preserve, promote, and given voice to the work, story, and memory of Bose, it would have to be Professor Partha Ghose. Professor Ghose has published his autobiography Kanamatra (কণামাত্র). Known, at least to those who follow Bose, as "Bose's last student" Professor Ghose is a Kolkata India resident, known to many as a multifaceted talent in science, education, music and the arts. As a public intellectual, Professor Ghose has dedicated his life to popularizing science for the masses. Professor Ghose also features prominently in the recent Dear Master a film by Subha Das Mollick, as can be seen in the film trailer. Wikipedia introduces him this:
NatureIndia published an interview with Professor Ghose and discussed his memories of Bose, as well as his own interest in science, music, and the arts. 'Einstein's death shattered Bose - he tore off an unpublished research paper in grief'A new book by Satyendra Nath Bose’s student and particle physicist Partha Ghose talks of Bose’s relations with Albert Einstein. Nature India caught up with Ghose to discuss some untold stories that find place in his Bengali autobiography Kanamatra. By Biplab Das, NatureIndia, 13 May 2024. Nature India: What inspired you to embark on a career in particle physics? Partha Ghose: In 1961, I went to Imperial College London wanting to decipher what lies at the deepest core of matter. This was when physicists had already begun smashing atoms in colliders, churning out new transient particles to unveil the secrets of matter. I was lucky to learn advanced physics from stalwarts in particle physics like Abdus Salam, P. T. Matthews and T. W. B. Kibble. In 1963, an opportunity to work briefly at CERN further spurred my interest in particle physics. NI: How did you meet S. N. Bose? PG: It was in mid-1963 that I met Bose, quite by chance. The famous Bengali pote Bishnu Dey, a relative of ours and Bose’s close friend, took me to meet Bose. They were immersed in discussion, and Bose suddenly turned to me and asked, ''Would you like to work with me?''. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse. He arranged everything very quickly and within days I joined his research group at the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics in Calcutta as a junior scientist. I worked on particle physics, mainly on broken SU(3) symmetry which was in vogue at the time. NI: How did Bose start interacting with Einstein and how was their relationship? Kanamatra (কণামাত্র)Available for order at Ananda Publishers or Amazon.in
 People who attended or watched the reply of the 27 March 2024 film watch event and Zoom showing of Dear Master are watching the film by Subha Das Mollick and submitting their reviews and comments. Some are writing film reviews as blog posts, such as the review by lasynch (pen name)
Others have read the On-Demand Replay Blog post following the film to watch the replay of the Zoom discussion between the Dr. Sriloy Dey, Director Subha Das Mollick, and panel participants, Dr. Thomas Einstein, great grandson of Albert Einstein, and Falguni Sarkar, grandson of Professor Bose, and then taken the time to submit a film review on the same page. Below are some of the reviews that have been submitted after the Ohio State University event on 27th March 2024. We will continue to add to this page for reviews that come in from this event.
We welcome additional film reviews and comments below!
 Dr. Sushanta Dattagupta. Eminent physicist, former Director of S.N Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences, former Director of IISER Kolkata, former Vice Chancellor of Viswa Bharati University. Peter Higgs (May 29, 1929 to April 8, 2024)Peter Higgs, a physicist born in Newcastle Upon Tyne, died two days ago at the age of 94. Six decades ago he had predicted the existence of a fundamental particle, the presence of which was crucial for the validity of the 'Standard Model' that unifies two basic forces of Nature: weak and electromagnetic. It took the world nearly five more decades before that elusive particle was detected at the large hadron collider (LHC) in the European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN), Geneva -- much to the relief of the high energy community.
The particle that was discovered in Geneva is called the Higgs boson. Why is it a boson? The latter name was christened by Paul Dirac, in deference to Satyendra Nath Bose, who along with Albert Einstein, had come up with a new kind of counting called the Bose-Einstein statistics. The latter suggest that there exists a set of elementary particles, an unbounded number of which can be accommodated in a given quantum state. Additionally, bosons are entities that are endowed with an intrinsic spin which is an integral multiple of the Planck constant. It must however be pointed out that Bose's focus was on the light quantum or photon that has a spin of unity (multiplied by the Planck constant), as his attempt was to give a mathematical foundation to the Planck radiation formula. On the other hand, the Higgs boson has a spin zero, distinct from that of the photon, yet it falls under the general classification scheme of bosons. By a queer twist of events exacerbated by 'social media' -- much to the chagrin of religious fundamentalists, the Higgs boson had acquired the popular name of the 'God particle'. The root-cause for that name is attributed to the Nobel laureate experimental physicist Leon Lederman who, out of frustration for not being able to detect it, had dubbed it as 'that goddamn particle'! By all accounts, Higgs did not appreciate the nomenclature, just as he did not want it to be named after himself. Why is the Higgs boson so significant for the acquisition of mass by the particles of the universe? Because, at a basic level, the interactions of 'fields' are symmetrical and consequently, the corresponding excitations have zero mass, called the Goldstone modes. A simple illustration is that of a marble at the bottom of a wine bottle. Although there is a hump at the middle which the marble has to overcome in order to cross-over from one position across another, it can however find it facile to move around the bottom of the bottle without any change in energy. Now, energy in Einstein's relativity corresponds to mass -- hence the Goldstone modes or zero-energy excitations, carry no mass. But, if the symmetry is broken, i.e., the bottom of the bottle is warped, zero-energy exchanges give way to finite energy changes and hence generation of mass. That is why the Higgs mechanism is so critical for the so-called 'mass-renormalization'. One year after the Higgs boson was discovered in CERN, Peter Higgs was awarded the Nobel prize in physics, along with Francois Englert, in 2013. We are featuring reviews of the Dear Master film via periodic blog posts. We encourage viewer reviews and film criticism. Please submit your review on the Film Review Submission Form. lasynchwho was fortunate to know S. N. Bose as a young person and be inspired by him Review of Dear Master, a film directed by Subha Das MollickWho is my Master? This is a question that many people think about, at different times of their lives, in various circumstances. It is of paramount importance and shapes our lives in a real way, for better or for worse.
The title (Dear Master) of the movie about S. N. Bose and Albert Einstein originates from the way Bose began several letters that he wrote to Einstein. In 1924 and 1925 he wrote three papers (the last one was never published and no manuscript remains) on quantum statistics - the first of these papers is the most celebrated, and made scientific history; it is the topic of many books, articles and papers ever since it was written a hundred years ago. The movie is very instructive in that a lot of it is focused on the scientific issues that were so important right at the initiation of quantum theory, in the first quarter of the twentieth century. It is beautifully composed and synthesized, with excellent explanations of the physics and mathematics that so many scientific luminaries were grappling with at that time. A major theme emerges when we realize that a young professor in a new university in a colonized land makes a major discovery while trying to teach his students about the nature of blackbody radiation. Teaching and research are inseparably intertwined. Bose regarded Einstein as his Master in scientific matters, and continued to regard him in this fashion for over thirty years, until Einstein passed away. At the same time, it is also true that he realized how Einstein's attitude towards his subsequent papers changed and evolved into silence or even disapproval and disagreement on certain issues. The favor of the Master tapered off, and it is likely that Bose understood this transformation as part of the human element of their relationship. There seems little doubt that Bose's acute perceptive nature missed any of these aspects. The student attempted to develop and grow as a scientist in the eyes of his Master, but the Master did not regard it as his responsibility to nurture and nourish his disciple. The movie does not deal directly with this difficult issue in a relationship that was fraught with the politics of science and a difference in cultures of the people involved. Bose was an unknown young scientist from a colonized land and people, yearning for recognition and guidance. Einstein, already a Nobel laureate and of enormous stature in science, recognized the brilliance of Bose's work and the support it leant to his own earlier ideas. He used the work of Bose to write his own brilliant papers without consulting or disclosing them to his "student." Bose accepted all this and there is little doubt that he saw exactly what happened but, being a naturally magnanimous person, he felt he was amply recognized for the work he had done. It was Paul Dirac who coined the word “boson” for particles with integer spin and then referred to their “Bose-Einstein statistics” and thus ensured that Bose would not be forgotten as a scientist. Bose spent the rest of his scientific life exploring other scientific fields. These explorations are largely forgotten today, and made little impact on science compared to his first 1924 paper that Einstein translated and sent for publication. Bose's lifelong achievement, not quantifiable in terms of results, accolades and recognitions (which he certainly received) was that he lived a generous and beautiful life in the community and country he was born in, and was a very positive influence on the lives of many young students and friends who regarded him as their Master. In this sense, Bose's Master (Einstein) could have learned a lot from his "student" but was unable to, perhaps because of his own cultural influences and personal characteristics. As my own teacher and mentor (Leonard Mandel) used to say, "Idols have clay feet." The movie provides a perspective of science and its development through unexpected channels, tracing the history of quantum science through the lives of two very different and unique individuals.
This blog post is by Mrs. Subha Das Mollick, Director of Dear Master a film about Bose Einstein. The film was presented at a special showing at The Ohio State University College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences on the campus of the university.
Below are Mrs. Das Mollick's impressions of the event. A recording the pre and post showing discussion on Zoom is available. To view the film itself, please follow the instructions below. Dear Master the film is available for viewing until Sunday 7 April, 2024 midnight Pacific Standard Time. After that please contact [email protected] for additional information. Thank you. 
It happens rarely in the life of a filmmaker that the grandchildren of the protagonists of her film grace the world premiere of the film.
That incredible moment came in my life on the 27th of March, 2024, when Dear Master was screened at the Ohio State University’s College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. Dr. Sriloy Dey, the prime mover of the event, had tracked down Albert Einstein’s great grandson Dr. Thomas Einstein and invited him to the world premiere of this film that explores the relationship between the star physicist of the day and an unknown physicist from a little known town in a colonized nation. Dr. Dey had also invited Falguni Sarkar, a grandson of this ‘little known physicist’. Today half the fundamental particles constituting the Universe are named after this physicist. His name is Satyendranath Bose and the particles that obey the statistics propounded by him are called Bosons. Falguni Sarkar called this epochal event of the coming together of the two grandsons, nothing short of ‘quantum entanglement’. For the world premiere of Dear Master, there was a small live audience at Ohio University and there was an eclectic audience of science enthusiasts from different corners of the world, who had joined online and who watched the film via the Vimeo link. 
By way of introduction I said that I was sitting in Bose’s native city Calcutta, once considered the second city of the Empire. In this city Bose is still a revered name, not because half the particles of the Universe are named after him, but because so many people have inherited fond memories of this friendly, easy going, ever helpful physicist who shunned the ivory tower of fame and led the life of a people’s physicist. Among the audience too were some with fond memories of Bose. They stayed back after the screening to share these cherished memories. They also asked questions that sprang in their mind after viewing the film. For many others in the audience, this relationship between two scientific minds was a revelation. In spite of their lack of knowledge in Physics, they were drawn into the human story. They wanted to know more about the points of divergence between Bose and Einstein’s thoughts on counting light quanta. They asked about the significance of Bose Einstein Statistics in our everyday life. Partha Debnath, who had joined in from Philadelphia, reminded us about the ‘God particles’ Higgs Bosons, that had hogged the newspaper headlines a little more than a decade ago. Bachaspati Roy from Delaware informed us about the children’s book he is writing on Indian luminaries in the pre Independence era. He said that the scientists in that era enjoyed a lot of camaraderie and they functioned almost like a consortium. The conversation inevitably turned to AI when, in response to Jayasri Hart’s comments, I said that the animations and recreations of Europe of the 1920s was a product of human intelligence and not AI. The conversation drifted from AI as image maker to AI as language expert. Bose, in his lifetime, had vociferously promoted the use of mother tongue for learning science. Today AI has made that task simpler. Interestingly, almost 100 percent of the online audience were Indians and 80 percent of them were first generation Bengalis residing in different parts of the world. The world premiere of Dear Master on the 27th of March proved that Satyendranath Bose is still a big draw among Bengalis anywhere in the world. Sadly, his influence tapers off outside this sphere. For me, the biggest take away of this world premiere was the comment by Darcie Whelan Kortan, “As a lay person, it was hard to understand the issue about the emission of the atom (that he seemed to disagree with Einstein about). If any physicist could explain briefly, much appreciated.” Thank you Darcie for following the film closely and asking such a pertinent question, even though you are not a physicist and you are not a Bengali. If the film succeeds in triggering the minds of more viewers like you, I shall consider that as the greatest fulfillment of my love’s labour. Subha Das Mollick Director, Dear Master Kolkata, India
We want to hear from you!
After you have watched Dear Master we would love to get your feedback and review of the film. Please take a few moments to provide us with your review and comments via the form below. Unless you approve otherwise, all information about you will be kept confidential, and will not be made available to any third party, advertiser, or related institution.
Thank you! Make a Donation
The SN Bose Project is an independent project led by Falguni Sarkar to educate the public about the life, work and contributions of Professor Satyendra Nath Bose, founder of Bose Einstein Statistics and for whom the fundamental particle Boson is named after.
The project often partners with writers, filmmakers, artists, and other organizations to host events relating to Professor Bose. Unless otherwise noted, all activities are offered at no cost. As such, if you would like to make a NON tax deductible donation to the SN Bose Project and our partners, we welcome your support with a donation of as much as you are able. Every penny is valuable for us and will help us keep going, and allow us to produce more content around this important project. For more information contact [email protected].
 Ravi Shankar (Ashim Roy & Family Private Collection) It was a special intimate recital I gave in Calcutta in the late 1940s at the residence of Jnan Prakash Ghosh that I first met Shri Satyen Bose. Though I didn't know him then, I was attracted to this pleasant looking elderly gentleman sitting in the front who was listening to me with such rapt admiration and exclaiming his appreciation at the right places in the right manner. After I finished, he paid such high tribute for my playing and the training I received from my Guru. When I was told who he was, I was bowled over. This was the great man from India, of Bose-Einstein fame! He said he played the Esraj (bowed instrument). Unfortunately, I never heard him but learned that he was a proficient musician. I met him a couple of different times at different functions in Calcutta. It was a year or two later, when he was Vice Chancellor of Shantiniketan (Vishwa Bharati) he invited me to spend a few days there. Having been in Shantineketan a few times in the early 30's when Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore was there. I was excited and accepted his invitation. I will always cherish the memory of those few days I spent there with all the students, the eminent teachers and especially Shri Bose! He was so full of fun and laughter. He was such a great man and I was a musician and so much younger than him, but without any air about himself, he would introduce and praise me to all the students and staff - I felt so embarrassed. I have met many great men in my life, but the memory of Satyen Bose will be etched in my memory forever.  San Diego, CA 2007
Pandit Ravi Shankar and Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. Jugalbandi. 1940s
We welcome a very special contribution to the SN Bose Project Blog by Dr. Supurna Sinha. Dr. Sinha is a physicist and Professor at the Raman Research Institute, Bangalore. Dr. Sinha is a daughter of the late Dr. Purnima Sinha, the renowned physicist, author and music scholar from Bengal who was a Ph.D student of Professor Bose, and was one of the first, perhaps the first, woman in Bengal to receive a Doctorate in Physics, and the eminent anthropologist Dr. Surajit Chandra Sinha The following article first appeared in Sopanam, the student magazine published by IISER Thiruvananthapuram (2013-2014) [Indian Institute of Science Education and Research] and appears here with permission from the author and publishers. Dr. Sinha had shared this article and permission to publish it here on the SN Bose Project Blog many years ago when I had the pleasure of meeting her and her mother, Purnima madam, at their home in Bengalaru. At that time I regretfully hadn't followed through to publish it on the previous incarnation of the SN Bose Project Website which then went dormant for many years until recently revived in this present form. I offer my sincere apologies to Dr. Sinha for the delay. As it turns out publishing it now is perfect timing especially the 100th Anniversary year of Bose Einstein Statistics, and over the past decade interest in Professor Bose has only grown. Her contribution adds to the growing historical, and personal, store of knowledge about Professor Bose, for which we are very grateful. I am sure people will enjoy the read. Remembering Satyendra Nath BoseBy Dr. Supurna Sinha
|
AuthorSNBose Project Archives
October 2024
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed
|
SN Bose Project. © 2024. All Rights Reserved.
Disclaimer. For permission to use content found on this site for personal or professional use read Fair Use Permission & Notification (with contact form). |