- Paul Johannes Brühl, a German botanist who moved to India in the late 19th century, made his extensive personal library available to Meghnad Saha and Satyendra Nath Bose in Calcutta in the 1910s. - Saha and Bose were able to teach themselves advanced physics from Brühl's library and develop their pioneering work, including Saha's famous ionization equation, during a period when communications between India and Europe were disrupted by World War I. - Brühl's library played a key role in allowing Indian scientists like Saha and Bose to advance physics during a period when Europe's scientific progress had been halted by the war.

1. Meghnad Saha in context :
Work, life, and times
Rajesh Kochhar
Mathematics Department, Panjab University Chandigarh
160014
Saha Equation 100
Calcutta University 23 Sep 2019
rkochhar2000@gmail.com

2. This year is the 100th anniversary of
Saha’s equation. It is also the 100th
anniversary of the end of World War 1.
Is this a mere coincidence? Or, are the
two events physically connected in
some indirect way? I would argue that
there indeed was a connection.

3. By a fortuitous combination of factors, Calcutta
became well versed with physics developments
in Germany right up to the closure of War.
Because of the War, science communications
were broken and scientific activity came to a
halt, in Europe. The disruption lasted a few
years. During this short period, India became
inheritor of German theoretical physics
scholarship and extended it further. That is how
Calcutta and Dacca within a short span of five
years could produce Nobel prize class work, by
MN Saha and SN Bose.

4. Indians were made aware of western science by Dr
Mahendra Lal Sircar. In 1876, after a long-drawn
campaign, Sircar was able to raise enough funding
from the Indians to establish Indian Association for
the Cultivation of Science. Although in his life
time,it failed in its avowed mission to initiate
scientific research by Indians, it did serve two
immediate important purposes. nd as a career
option.

5. Bengalis became aware of science as a subject
aThe government on its part was compelled to
introduce science teaching in its education
system. This Bengali fascination for pure science
continues. By the latter decades of the 19th
century, the English-knowing Bengal middle
class had become articulate and assertive, and
come to occupy responsible positions in the
colonial establishment. Cultivation of modern
science was seen as an extension of the
nationalist movement.

6. The recognition that JC Bose and PC Ray won for
their work in Europe proved, because proof was
needed, that through science the gap between the
ruler and the ruled could be abridged.
At the twelfth Indian National Congress session in
1896 Anand Mohan Bose (who was married to JC
Bose’s sister) referred to the western recognition
won by JC Bose and Ray and also drew attention to
the fact that in 1896 an Indian candidate Atul
Kumar Chatterjee (1874 -1955) had come first in
the I.C.S. examination beating many European
competitors.

7. Anand Mohan declared that while “India has
not forgotten the… traditions of her glorious
past”, “the Indian mind has awakened to the
consciousness of the great destiny before it”,
and “has taken the first practical steps towards
obtaining its recognition from the generous
scholars of the West”.
Note that recognition from the West was
eagerly sought for. This psychology has
persisted to date
_

8. Asutosh Mookerjee
Calcutta University, like others, had been
content with affiliating colleges, holding
examinations, and awarding degrees. It was
transformed into a teaching and research
centre through the efforts of Asutosh
Mookerjee (1864-1924). He held MA degrees
both in mathematics (1885) and physical
science (1886).

9. With original published research to his credit,
he would have liked to become a lecturer in
mathematics at the Calcutta University, but the
first Indian vice-chancellor, Sir Gooroodas
Bannerjee (1844- 1918) who held office during
1890-1892, was unable to raise the requisite
funds. A disappointed Asutosh then shifted to
law. In 1904 he became a judge of the Calcutta
High Court.

10. He served as part-time vice-chancellor
consecutively from 1906-1914, through four
two-year terms, and then again during 1921-
1923. In 1912, he initiated a vigorous drive for
the establishment of University College of
Science, beginning with munificent donations
from two lawyers. (It would have been a
rather easy task for a judge to persuade
lawyers). The foundation stone of the College
was laid in 1914 which became functional in
1916.

11. Two physics professorships were created. The
experimental physicist CV Raman was
appointed Palit professor and head of the
department, but would join only in July 1917.
The other professorship, named after Ghose,
was offered to the England-educated, well-
connected, Debendra Mohan Bose (1885-
1975), in 1914, who in addition was awarded a
two-year European travelling fellowship. He
chose to go to Berlin, where he had to remain
till the war ended. His internment in Germany
proved very beneficial for Indian physics.

12. Both Saha and Bose were class fellows. They
passed MSc in ‘mixed mathematics’ (and not
physics) in 1915 from the Presidency College
Calcutta. The next year both were appointed
lecturers in mathematics, but since they could
not pull on well with the professor, they were
transferred to the physics department the
following year, that is in 1917.

13. In the absence of any seniors, , the task of
designing the courses and delivering lectures
dwelt on the two young lecturers, Saha and
Bose, who themselves had not studied
advanced physics as students. They taught
themselves physics to be able to teach their
students, and in the process became world-
renowned researchers themselves. Though
Saha and Bose were part of the British Empire,
professionally they were children of Germany.
Their physics education came through German-
language books, in two installments.

14. Professor Paul Johannes Brühl (1855-1935) was
born in the village Weifa in Bautzen district of the
Sachsen state in Germany. Since he contracted
TB, he decided to move to the warmer climate of
Bengal. During 1878-1881, he travelled through
central Europe, Turkey, Asia Minor, and Armenia
collecting plant specimens, and arrived at his
destination Bengal in July 1881.

15. Even though his world fame rests on his
contributions to botany, he was a versatile
scientist. In an era when most senior positions in
the colonial education service were filled by
‘third-rate Scotsmen’ (Mehra 1975, 120), a
knowledgeable, dedicated, and friendly
European was a great asset to colonial and
nationalist science and education.

16. In 1882 he was absorbed in the provincial
education service, class I (as distinct from the
higher-ranking Indian education service) and
appointed professor in Rajshahi College (now in
Bangla Desh). He married an English woman, Annie
Betts Fox, in 1883. In 1887, Sir George King (1840-
1909), the director of Calcutta botanic garden,
arranged for Brühl’s transfer to the Bengal
Engineering College, in Sibpur near Calcutta, with a
view to utilizing his botanical expertise. In 1896
the two published the Century of new and rare
Indian plants. This influential illustrated text would
undergo 18 editions till 1971. Plants have been
named in his honour.

17. At Sibpur, Brühl taught physics and held
charge of the library, officiated as the principal
in 1895, and served as part-time lecturer in
geology at Presidency College during 1902-03.
On his retirement from government service in
1912, he was made Companion of the
Imperial Service Order. He spent a few months
during 1912-1913 at the Indian Institute of
Science Bangalore learning chemical geology.
In 1913 he accepted the post of the Calcutta
University registrar which he held till 1918.

18. He was extremely unhappy at the drudgery of the
post. In early 1914 he complained to Sir David
Prain, director Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, that
before he accepted the post, he had been
informed that he would have opportunities of
doing some research work. But that was not the
case. He made up his mind in June 1914 to leave
India for good and move to England to do
botanical research at Kew
https://plants.jstor.org/stable/10.5555/al.ap.visu
al.kdcas289). Fortunately for India, he was
thwarted by the war, and then the conditions
changed for the better.

19. In 1918, he was appointed professor of botany
which post he held till 1928. To mark his
services, his former and current students
raised money to institute a Paul Johannes
Brühl Memorial Medal, a triennial award for
contributions to the study of Asiatic botany, to
be awarded by the Royal Asiatic Society of
Bengal of which he was a prominent member
(Biographical details are mostly from Banerjee
1935).

20. If Brühl had left for England in 1914, he would
probably have taken his extensive personal
library with him. He now made it available to
Saha (who already knew some German) and
Bose. Among the books they borrowed and
read were the works by Maxwell and
Boltzmann as also the more recent ones such
as Planck’s Vorlesungen über die Theorie der
Wärmestrahlung (1906) and von Laue’s
Relativitatsprinzip (1911) (Mehra 2001, 504).

21. According to Bose, Brühl himself might not
have read many books he owned. It is not
clear why and how Brühl acquired books he
did not really need for himself. ( Bose is
mistaken in saying that Brühl was at the
engineering college when they borrowed
books from him (Wali 2009, 270. As noted
above he was at the time the University
registrar).

22. Whatever little we know of Brühl is from his
obituary published in Current Science and
written by his student Kalipada Banerjee. I
contacted the Sachsen state archives to see if
they had any useful material. They said they
could depute somebody to search the records,
but I would have to pay for the labours
irrespective of the success or non-success of
the exercise! Unfortunately I was not in a
position to hire a Europe-based European
assistant.

23. I think a biography of Brühl, making use of
European sources and Indian records, would
be instructive. If Calcutta University or West
Bengal government were to officially contact
German Embassy, it may be possible to initiate
a joint project.
• -

24. DM Bose returned to Calcutta in 1919 bringing
with him a large number of books including
the latest German publications. Saha and Bose
now continued their self education in DM
Bose’s library, with help from him. Among the
books they read was a special issue of
Naturwissenschaften, dated 26 April 1918, as
a festschrift on Planck’s 60th birthday,
containing articles by many eminent authors
(Mehra 2001, 506).
-

25. A major development in astronomy was the
introduction of spectroscopy, in the early
decades of the 19th century. The sun was the
first star to be studied. As telescopes became
bigger and instrumentation better, spectra of
more and more stars were obtained. By the
1910s, a vast amount of data on solar and
stellar spectra had been obtained and an
empirical spectral classification scheme
(Harvard) devised. Obviously the classification
was physically meaningful, but what was the
theoretical basis?

26. It was inevitable that sooner or later theoretical
basis for the spectral classification would be
found.
History chooses the hour; and the hour
produces the hero. The only surprise was that
the hour was seized not in any established
research centre in the West but in a far-off
Calcutta which was nowhere on the world
research map.

27. Saha is universally recognized as one of the
founders of quantitative astrophysics. His
theoretical papers published in British journals
during 1920-1921 showed that astronomical
spectra of all kinds, notwithstanding their
seeming complexity and diversity, can be
rigorously explained in terms of known laws
and chemical elements, by simply invoking
different physical conditions. In 1854, William
Huggins had postulated that the strong
green emission lines in the spectra of Cat's Eye
Nebula arose from a new element
Nebulium not known in the Earth.

28. It was only in 1927 that Ira Sprague Bowen, using
Saha’s theory, showed that the lines are emitted
by doubly ionized oxygen (O2+), and no new
element was necessary to explain them. Saha’s
work has a deep philosophical significance.
It transformed the cosmos from an exotic out-field
into a science lab.

29. Saha left for Europe for the first time in
September 1920 and returned a year later, in
late 1921. His first two papers, including the
one that gave his famous ionization formula,
were published from Calcutta, before his
departure. And yet, much to his annoyance,
an impression was sought to be created in the
West that Saha did his pioneer work while in
England, implying that ‘an Indian was
incapable of making breakthrough discoveries
without western training or western
assistance’ (DeVorkin 1994, 156).

30. In 1920, Saha and Bose brought out, from Calcutta
University Press, the world’s first-ever English
translation of Einstein and Minkowski’s papers on
relativity, written during 1905-1916. Reviewing it,
Nature wrote in 1922 that
it ‘will be of service to those who are unfamiliar with
German, and wish to grapple with the pioneer
works, some of which are rather inaccessible’.

31. The inaccessibility was due to the war.
Restoration of full European scientific activity
and knowledge exchange would take some
years. During this short period, India became
inheritor of German theoretical physics
scholarship and extended it further. Physics
was young then. Research papers, text books,
and popular accounts all complemented one
another, and it was easy to identify
outstanding research problems.

32. Both Saha and Bose were mathematically
well-equipped to address and solve them.
Saha learnt about the extant spectral
confusion from Agnes Mary Clerke’s 1903
Problems in Astrophysics, while Bose would
immediately see the inner inconsistency in the
derivation of Planck’s Law and set out to
impart rigour to it.

33. On return from Europe (in late 1921), Saha
was made Khaira professor, but the personal
elevation left basic issues unaddressed.
Nationalist science faced a dilemma. Not
enough money was forthcoming from Indian
donors. In the West, science was means of
production of wealth, a part of which was
ploughed back to support science. Science
however played hardly any role in Indian
economy.

34. Sporadic and limited funding for science came
about because the individuals collecting
money ( like Sircar and Asutosh) enjoyed
social and official prestige and were well-
networked. This mode was unsustainable in
the long run. The colonial government was
ready to help with grants but demanded
administrative control in return, which the
Indian side was not willing to concede.

35. It is noteworthy that Sircar’s Science
Association began as a government funded
institution. In its reports, the government
treated it as a science college. Sircar however
returned the grant received till then to run the
Association in solitary splendor. Basic
differences over the prorities led Rajendra Lala
Mittra to resign as the vice-president.

36. History of science in India would have been
different if Science Association had been run
as a government-aided institution. Recall that
Hindu College (estd 1817) began as a private
institution, and came to the verge of collapse
by 1823. It survived and flourished when it
became government aided with attendant
government control.

37. Saha would have liked to carry out further
observational and experimental work
suggested by his theory, but University
funding was not forthcoming. On this count,
he fell out with the head of the department,
Raman, who as an experimentalist would
himself be in need of funds. Saha moved to
Allahabad University in 1923, where he would
remain till 1938 when he returned to Calcutta
University to occupy the professorial chair
once held by Raman. He retired in 1953 on
reaching 60 years.

38. In 1923, Saha turned to USA for a grant to set up
a spectroscopic lab. The grant might have been
forthcoming if Raman had not given a negative
report to Millikan on Saha’s experimental abilities
(DeVorkin 1994, 162). One can understand the
turf war between Raman and Saha when they
both were competing for funding from within
India. But, Raman’s thwarting Saha’s efforts to
obtain a research grant from Rockefeller
philanthropy shows pettiness of mind. Raman
and Saha, both important Indian science leaders,
maintained a life-long mutually antagonistic
relationship.

39. Saha had wanted to join government service
but was refused permission because of his
pronounced anti-British stance. For the same
reason, the British government would have
liked The Royal Society to exclude Saha. It
goes to the credit of the Society that it ignored
the pressures and the hints, and elected him a
fellow, in 1927. This recognition brought him
an annual research grant of £300 from the
Indian government followed by Royal Society’s
grant of £250 in 1929 (DeVorkin 1994, 164).
But the aid came too late.

40. Como
Saha was an invitee at the prestigious
international congress of physics held in Como,
Italy, in September 1927, which was attended by
11 Nobel laureates. The other intended invitee
from India was SN Bose, but the organizers were
shocked to discover that a wrong Bose had
landed (Kochhar 1994)! The confusion rose in the
following manner. Bose’s pioneer paper
published in Zeitschrift fuer Physik in August
1924, translated and communicated by Einstein,
gave the name of the author as Bose (without
initials), Dacca University, India.

41. However, in his own two follow-up papers
published in September 1924 and February 1925,
Einstein carelessly calls the author D Bose.
Apparently the Como organizers picked up the
invitee’s name from Einstein’s paper rather than
Bose’s own. That is how DM Bose came to Como
in place of SN Bose. For scientists sitting in
Europe, the various Boses in Bengal were indeed
bosons.

42. Years later, when DM Bose speaking from a public
platform, referred to his Como visit, SN Bose who was
also on the dais interjected: You went on my
invitation.
In 1924, when DM Bose received the invitation, did he
know that it was for SN Bose or did he genuinely
believe that he himself had been invited?
SN Bose presumably learnt about the invitation from
Saha when returned from Como. He told it to KS
Krishnan who in turn told S Chandrasekhar. Years
later, Chandrasekhar narrated the incident to his PhD
student SK Trehan, my Ph D supervisor .

43. Years later, during one of Chandrasekhar’s visits to
Bangalore, I asked him about the incident. He
confirmed the story. When he moved to Chicago,
with characteristic thoroughness, he had checked
it with Enrico Fermi.
He asked me to check the story for myself to the
extent possible. At the same time he asked me
not to cite him when I wrote about it.
_

44. In 1926, when Bose was in Europe on
scholarship, he applied for a professorship at
Dacca. Since he did not have a doctorate, his
friends advised him to get a letter of
recommendation from Einstein. Einstein was
surprised at the request; because Bose’s
internationally acclaimed work should have
been its own recommendation. This part of
the story is well known.

45. What is not so well known is that in spite of
Einstein’s recommendation, Bose was not
selected for the post. Arnold Sommerfeld was
the expert the University consulted. He was of
the opinion that DM Bose was preferable
(Rashid 1994). Accordingly, the position was
offered to DM Bose, and SN Bose placed on
the waiting list. DM Bose was well ensconced
in Calcutta. It would have been expected
hewas unlikely to transfer to Dacca. He indeed
decided to stay put in Calcutta and SN Bose
was made a professor at Dacca, in 1927.

46. It is understandable that during the British era,
Indian science looked up to the West, the more
so because Indian scientific community was very
small. However, Indian science never became
self-assessing.
When Paul Dirac visited India in the late 1950s he
was shocked to discover that Bose was not an
FRS. The omission reflected poorly on the Society.
On Dirac’s initiative, Bose was elected FRS
belatedly in 1958. At the time, there were already
a number of Indian Fellows, but none of them
had ventured to propose Bose’s name.

47. We have here at work what may be called the
Sultan’s Harem Syndrome: Inmates of a harem
compete with one another to catch the eye of
the Sultan, and prevent others from doing so,
the Sultan in this case being the West.
The syndrome still exists
_

48. Saha’s father was a very poor shopkeeper in rural
East Bengal, now Bangla Desh. As a high school
student, he won Rs 100 as first prize in an all-
Bengal Bible competition organized by the Dacca
Baptist Mission. I think the motivating factor was
not so much Christianity as the 100 rupees.
Although Saha has been well studied, two
questions remain outstanding. Christian
missionaries meticulously kept their records and
published them. What is the primary source for
this episode. Also, in 1910 at the time of the
apparition of Comet Halley, Saha wrote an article
on it from Dacca, presumably for the college
magazine. It will be instructive to locate that.

49. Many biographers tend to gloss over his
childhood poverty by resorting to cliches. He
was poor but he took it in his strde. Nothing of
that sort ever happened.

50. In the peculiar Bengal social hierarchy, his caste
was ranked low (though higher that the erstwhile
‘untouchables’). Caste humiliation scarred Saha
for life. Casteism in a rural setting, which he
experienced when he was young, would not have
hurt as much as when it was practised in Calcutta
in the Eden Hindu hostel, a government hostel
attached to the Presidency College. He was not
permitted to eat at the main table nor allowed to
participate in the annual worship of Sarasvati, the
goddess of learning who would have considered
him his favourite child.

51. Perhaps the upper caste boys in general, irked
by his brilliance, wanted to show him his
place. He however did have upper-caste
friends who stood with him. After two years of
uncomfortable stay at the hostel, he along
with a handful of upper-caste friends moved
out of the hostel to a private mess [board and
lodge]. Even half a century later, he had
neither forgotten nor forgiven.

52. In 1952, he was an elected member of the first
Lok Sabha from Calcutta defeating a nominee
of Nehru’s ruling Congress Party. When
inmates of the Eden Hindu hostel called on
him to invite him to preside over the annual
function, he refused bluntly, recalling for their
information his college-day humiliation
(Majumdar 1994).

53. Many biographers have tended to gloss over
his childhood poverty by resorting to cliches
such as: He was poor but he took it in his
stride. Nothing of that sort ever happened.
Nothing was taken in stride.

54. In 1952, the government formed a Calendar Reform
Committee under the chairmanship of Saha. It was
entrusted with the task of 'examining all the existing
calendars which are being followed in the country at
present and after a scientific study of the subject,
submit proposals for an accurate and uniform calendar
for the whole of India'. The Committee's Report was
submitted in 1955 and the Government, in accepting
its recommendations of the Committee, decided that 'a
unified National Calendar' (the Saka Calendar) be
adopted for use with effect from 21 March 1956 A.D.,
i.e., 1 Chaitra 1878 Saka.

55. The Committee Report, published in 1955
included an authoritative review of the ‘History
of the calendar in different countries through the
ages' by Saha and NC Lahiri, which was
subsequently published separately (Saha and
Lahiri 1992) . It employed a traditional name,
Saka,for the new calendar and retained the
traditional month names, creating great
confusion. The new calendar remained a non-
starter. It is however interesting that the task of
reforming traditional calendar was entrusted to a
person who barely four decades previously had
not been permitted to participate in Sarasvati
puja.

56. Saha founded a journal Science and Culture
in June 1935 and edited it till his death,
making it a vehicle for his strident views on
the role of science in nation building. Saha
was quite close to Jawaharlal Nehru in the
years preceding Indian independence, but the
distance increased subsequently (Sur 2002).
Nehru, India’s charismatic Prime Minister
during 1947-1964, had a soft corner for
sophisticated, suave, upper-crust people.

57. Saha was originally given the first name
Meghnath (lord of the clouds). At some stage, he
changed it to Meghnad (thunder of the clouds).
The choice was significant. In the Hindu holy epic
Ramayana, it is the name of the son of the
demon king Ravana.
Bitter and angry, confrontational rather than
persuasive, Saha, unlike Homi Jahangir Bhabha
(1909-1966) and Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar (1894-
1955), did not become part of big science under
Nehru (Anderson 2010).
_

58. Normally, an activity begins modestly, reaches
a peak, declines somewhat, and settles on a
plateau. By a fortuitous combination of
factors, Indian physics began at the top, but
did not have the wherewithal to sustain itself;
it had no place to go but down.

59. Given his intellectual prowess, teaching
abilities, restlessness, social background, and
political inclinations, Saha remained active
throughout his life in various fields. But at the
end of the day, as far as the world science is
concerned, Saha’s individual brilliance
remained individual./

60. THANK
YOU

61. REFERENCES
• Anderson, Robert S. (2010) Nucleus and Nation: Scientists, International
Networks, and Power in India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
• Banerjee, Kalipada (1935) Current Science, 4, 231
• Chatterjee, Santimay and Chatterjee, Enakshi (1994) Current Science
66(2): 166-170.
• DeVorkin, David H. (1994) Journal for the History of Astronomy, 25, 155-
188.
• Kochhar, Rajesh (1994) The wrong Bose at Como. Economic Times 31May
• Mehra, Jagdish (1974) Biographical Memoirs of the Royal Society
(London), 21, 116-154.
• Mehra, Jagdish (2001) The Golden Age Of Theoretical Physics, Vol. 1 (
World Scientific).
• Rashid, Harun-ar (1994) Satyen Bose in Dhaka (University of Dhaka)
• Saha, M.N. and Lahiri, N.C. (1992) Foreword to History of the Calendar in
Different Countries Through the Ages (New Delhi: CSIR, originally
published 1955)
• Sur, Abha (2002) Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences,
33, 87-105.
• Wali, Kameshwar C. (2009) Satyendra Nath Bose: His Life and Times :
Selected Works (with Commentary) (Singapore: World Scientific).