Satyendra Nath Bose appeared on the physics scene like a comet.
The year was 1924. Physics was in the middle of the biggest upheaval in its history. The old foundations had crumbled in the face of new data. The picture of a new ‘quantum theory’ was emerging. But it was a fractured, disjointed picture with major pieces missing.
The search was on among physicists to find the pieces and complete the jigsaw. In the best universities of Europe, new ideas were being proposed, debated, and discarded every week. Then a lecturer of physics from Dhaka University — located then in the backwater of backwaters — appeared out of nowhere with a major missing piece of the puzzle.
