Bose Institute

J.C. Bose founded the Bose Institute in Calcutta in 1917. He wanted a place where many sciences could work together. The institute still stands as one of India’s oldest research centres.

1. When and how did Bose open the Institute?

Bose opened the Bose Institute on 30 November 1917. That was his birthday, born 30 November 1858, so he turned 59. He dedicated it to the nation in a speech called “The Voice of Life”.

He said it was “not merely a laboratory but a temple”. Its aims were to advance science and to spread knowledge.

The Institute began at the Main Campus in Rajabazar, in central Kolkata.

2. Who inspired and helped him?

Swami Vivekananda, Sister Nivedita, Sara Chapman Bull and Rabindranath Tagore supported Bose. Sara Chapman Bull was an American philanthropist. Her generous gifts were important in setting up the Institute.

Nivedita’s influence shows in the Institute’s emblem, the vajra. Tagore was then visiting the USA. He wrote the song “Matri mondiro punya angono” for the day. It is now the Institute’s anthem.

3. What is special about the building?

Bose wanted the building to be one of the finest in the city. The pink sandstone was brought from Chunar. The stone craftsmen came from Benaras. A young architect, A.N. Mitter, built it.

The artists Abanindranath Tagore and Nandalal Bose helped with the art. At the entrance is a marble relief of Sister Nivedita, made by the sculptor Vinayak Pandurang Karmakar. The lecture hall was modelled on the Royal Institution in London, where Bose had lectured many times.

Bose carried on his own studies there. Later scientists added new fields. Some of their results were world firsts.

4. What did Bose study at the Institute?

From 1902 to 1907 Bose built models of how living things respond to a push. The models explained how excitation travels through plant and animal tissue. They also covered vision and memory.

From 1907 to 1933 he mostly studied plants. Their responses lie between those of non-living matter and animals.

5. What did visitors see in the museum?

The J.C. Bose museum has been part of the Institute since 1917. Its wide entrance hall was used to show Bose’s discoveries, often with a live demonstration by Bose himself.

The writer Aldous Huxley visited in 1926. He noted that all the experiments were running at full blast. Many original instruments were put on display in 1986-87. A floor was added in 2005.

6. Why does the Darjeeling campus matter?

Bose built the Mayapuri and Haimavati buildings in Darjeeling in 1920. He took advice from Tagore and Nandalal Bose. Many basic experiments by Bose and his students were done here.

D.M. Bose and Biva Choudhury ran their cosmic ray experiment here. Today the campus hosts a national facility for astroparticle physics and space science. Cosmic rays are fast particles that reach Earth from space.

7. What did Institute scientists discover?

Debendra Mohan Bose and his co-workers made the first recording of mu-meson tracks. A mu-meson is a short-lived particle made by cosmic rays.

Shambu Nath De found how cholera toxin works. Joshua Lederberg nominated him for the Nobel Prize. B.B. Biswas and his group showed that plants have many forms of the enzyme RNA polymerase. They also found the inositol phosphate cycle in plants.

The Institute now works under the Department of Science and Technology (DST). It has grown from one building into several campuses.

8. Who pays for and runs it?

The DST was set up in May 1971. Since then the Bose Institute has been an autonomous grant-in-aid institution of DST. Autonomous means it runs its own affairs. Grant-in-aid means the government funds it.

9. Who has led it?

Bose himself was Director from 1917 to 1937. Debendra Mohan Bose led it for thirty years, from 1937 to 1967. Later directors include Sibaji Raha (2006 to 2016) and Uday Bandyopadhyay (2019 to 2024). Prof. Kaustuv Sanyal is the present Director.

10. Where are its campuses?

The Institute now has seven campuses across West Bengal. The Main Campus is in Rajabazar. Its primary working campus is the Unified Academic Campus at Sector V, Bidhannagar, in East Kolkata.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh laid its foundation stone on 2 June 2012. President Pranab Mukherjee inaugurated it on 29 June 2017. It brought scientists from several older sites together.

11. What does it research now?

Early work was in plant physiology, physics, chemistry and biophysics. Over recent decades the Institute added biochemistry and structural biology. It also added plant sciences, molecular and cell biology, microbiology and environmental science.

Biotechnology and bioinformatics came next. Its stress is on both basic and applied research.

Research is still active today. On 6 August 2026 its scientists shared a new way to build quantum networks. It was published in a physics journal. It is called General Concurrence Percolation. It aims to make such networks easier to build.

The Institute drew great minds from the start. Its own scientists later won national prizes.

12. Which famous people visited?

King Albert I of Belgium came in 1925. Aldous Huxley came in 1926. President Brezhnev of the USSR came in 1959.

Many Nobel laureates have visited, among them Niels Bohr, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Har Gobind Khorana and Venkatraman Ramakrishnan.

13. Which honours did its scientists win?

Institute scientists have won the S.S. Bhatnagar Prize. Some became fellows of The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) and of every national science academy in India.

Some also won the top Bengali literary awards, the Rabindra Puraskar and the Ananda Puraskar. The entomologist Gopal Chandra Bhattacharya, a popular Bengali science writer, won both.

Questions test the founder, the year and the place. Learn the pairs below.

14. Which pairs and traps should you remember?

Bose Institute goes with J.C. Bose, founded 1917 in Calcutta. It has nothing to do with Satyendra Nath Bose and his boson.

The Institute calls itself Asia’s first modern research centre for interdisciplinary research. It is run by DST, not by the Department of Atomic Energy.