Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose | Page 2

early education. "While my father's subordinates" says Sir
Jagadis "sent their children to the English schools intended for gentle
folks, I was sent to the vernacular school, where my comrades were
hardy sons of toilers and of others who, it is now fashion to regard,
were belonging to the depressed classes."[3] Speaking of the effect it
produced on him, observes Sir Jagadis "From these who tilled the
ground and made the land blossom with green verdure and ripening
corn, and the sons of the fisher folk, who told stories of the strange
creatures that frequented unknown depths of mighty rivers and stagnant
pools, I first derived the lesson of that which constitutes true manhood.
From them too I drew my love of nature."[3]
"I now realise" continues Sir Jagadis "the object of my being sent at the
most plastic period of my life to the vernacular school where I was to
learn my own thoughts and to receive the heritage of our national
culture through the medium of our own literature. I was thus to
consider myself one with the people and never to place myself in an
equivocal position of assumed superiority."[3]
"The moral education which we received in our childhood" adds Sir
Jagadis "was very indirect and came from listening to stories recited by
the "Kathaks" on various incidents connected with our great epics.
Their effects on our mind was Very great."[4]
And it is very interesting to learn from the lips of Sir Jagadis himself
"that the inventive bent of his mind received its first impetus" in the

industrial and technical schools established by his father.[4]
HIS COLLEGIATE EDUCATION IN INDIA
After he had developed, in the pathsala, some power of observation,
some power of reasoning and some power of expression through the
healthy medium of his own mother tongue, young Jagadis was sent to
an English School for education. He passed the Entrance Examination,
in 1875, from the St. Xavier's Collegiate School, Calcutta, in the First
Division. He then joined the College classes of that Institution, and
there, in the "splendid museum of Physical Science Instruments," he
drew his early inspirations in Physics from that remarkable educationist
and brilliant experimentalist, the Rev. Father E. Lefont, S.J., C.I.E.,
M.I.E.E., who had the rare gift of enkindling the imagination of his
pupils. He passed the First Examination in Arts, in 1877, in the Second
Division and the B.A. Examination by the B. Course (Science Course),
in 1880, in the Second Division. "It is the paramount duty of the
University" says Sir Ashutosh Mookerjea "to discover and develop
unusual talent."[5] The Calcutta University, by the test of examination
which it applied, totally failed to discover (not to speak of developing)
the powers of an original mind which was destined to enrich the world
by giving away the fruits of its experience.
HIS STUDY ABROAD
After Jagadis had graduated himself, in the Calcutta University, he
longed to get a course of scientific education in England. He was sent
to Cambridge and joined the Christ's College. He came in "personal
contact with eminent men, whose influence extorted his admiration and
created in him a feeling of emulation. In the way he owed a great deal
to Lord Rayleigh, under whom he worked."[6] He passed the B.A.
Examination of the Cambridge University, in Natural Science Tripos,
in 1884. He also secured, in 1883, the B.Sc. Degree with Honours of
London University. Jagadis had, by birth, the speculative Indian mind.
And, by his scientific education, at home and abroad, he developed a
capacity for accurate experiment and observation and learnt to control
his Imagination--"that wonderous faculty which, left to ramble
uncontrolled leads us astray into a wilderness of perplexities and errors,

a land of mists and shadows; but which, properly controlled by
experience and reflection, becomes the noblest attribute of man; the
source of poetic genius, the instrument of discovery in Science."[7] His
strength and fertility as a discoverer is to be referred in a great measure
to the harmonious blending of the burning Imagination of the East with
the analytical methods of the West.
APPOINTED AS A PROFESSOR
After having completed his education abroad. Jagadis chose the
teaching of Science as his vocation. He was appointed as Professor of
Physical Science at the Presidency College, Calcutta. He joined the
service on the 7th January, 1885. Although he was appointed in Class
IV of the then Bengal Educational Service, (which afterwards merged
in the present Indian Educational Service), he was not admitted to the
full scale of pay of the Service. He, being an Indian, was allowed to
draw only two-thirds the pay of his grade. This humiliating distinction
was, however, removed in his case, on the 21st September 1903, when
the bureaucracy could not any longer ignore the pressure of enlightened
opinion that was