A two-day international conference commemorating 100 years of Bose-Einstein statistics was curiously described as “A legacy of Dhaka“It was organized by the Department of Physics at the University of Dhaka, so I figured the organizers would probably highlight their department or institution as the ground zero for revolutionary theories in quantum physics. After all, it It was during the formative years of the department that Satyendra Nath Bose came up with the revolutionary idea that he shared with Albert Einstein. The correspondence led to the creation of boson particles, leading to an exponential leap in quantum physics. The condensation of Bose-Einstein (BEC) remained a distant reality in the world last century due to the requirement of absolute zero temperature for the particle. Final approval of the hypothesis came when three scientists were awarded the prize. Nobel Prize in Physics in 2001 for “achieving Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute gases of alkaline atoms and for the first fundamental studies of the properties of condensates.” The spotlight has once again turned to an unlikely correspondence between a young professor at Dhaka University and the maestro of relativity, Albert Einstein.

The celebration of the place intrigued me. Dhaka, in the 1920s, was just a provincial city. The campus was not even considered an integral part of downtown. “On the outskirts of Dhaka lies the vast Ramna Estate, a splendid site of around 450 acres” (SN Bose: the man and his work). To think that a young reader from this university, aged around twenty, could go to Berlin and propose a solution to a theoretical problem that Einstein would have struggled with is audacious to say the least. But it also shows the promise with which our first university began and the achievements that can be achieved with the right attitudes and skills.

The celebration of the correspondence between two remarkable 20th century physicists allows us to reflect on the glory days of the country’s first university, created as an imperial concession. Following the annulment of the Partition of Bengal, a Muslim delegation including Nawab Sir Khwaja Salimullah, Syed Nawab Ali Chowdhury and Sher-e-Bangla AK Fazlul Haq met with the Viceroy to ensure the educational progress of their community thanks to the creation of their own university. The first vice-chancellor, Sir PJ Hartog, explained this political context at the first meeting of his tribunal (later renamed the Senate) in 1921. Hartog handpicked his faculty members to ensure that the university is developing as a residential and teaching university which is inspired by the university model. after Oxford. Satyendra Nath Bose was one of his best recruits whom Hartog personally met in Calcutta.

The position intended for a reader was announced in the famous scientific journal Nature. Bose’s classmate at the University of Calcutta applied for the same job in England, when he had just completed his Doctor of Science (DSc). Bose was not lucky enough to get a scholarship to travel to Europe, probably due to his close links with the Swadeshi movement earlier. But he ended up coming to Dhaka as a favorite of his department chair, Walter Jenkins, who was impressed by an article Bose had published in the Phil Mag newspaper. Ironically, it was the rejection of another article in the same journal that led him to approach Einstein, which I will describe later.

Let us first think about Bose’s arrival in Dhaka. He left behind a much more vibrant city and a permanent job at the University of Calcutta. One motivation was the high salary structure Hartog planned. The endowment of the newly established university enabled Dhaka to offer double the salary paid in Calcutta. However, this was short-lived as RK Shanmukham Chetty, India’s first finance minister, adjusted the allocated fund of Tk 55 lakh with the official buildings donated to the university. The university therefore had to reduce the salaries of its staff. Bose received a fixed salary of Tk 400 instead of the promised scale of Tk 400 to Tk 1,200. Within two years, Bose became disillusioned and had to confront the university administration with this injustice. The university could not lose him under any circumstances and granted him a two-year study leave to go to Paris. But the tension between the right incentives to do research persists.

In Dhaka, Bose wrote to his friends, lamenting the lack of up-to-date newspapers and equipment. Later, in Calcutta, he told his students: “We lived on the moon, you understand, on the moon! Indeed, Bose felt excluded, because many of his friends had then traveled to Europe. Dhaka lacked the intellectual milieu of Calcutta. Instead, the green spaces and gardens gave Bose the peace of mind needed for his research. The garden he had in his bungalow was proof of his green thumb. He was, however, very happy that the administration was sincere in purchasing books and magazines for the library. He joked that the lab at Dhaka College, run by White sahibshad so many scattered devices that it took extensive research to rearrange them. Walter Jenkins was then head of the physics department. The teaching team included RN Ghosh and Qazi Motahar Hussain. Bose took courses in thermodynamics and electromagnetic theory from Maxwell. Meghnad Saha served as an external examiner for one of the practical exams. Rumor has it that Saha pointed out the anomaly in one of the recently published papers on quantum theory that he had asked his friend to review.

In June 1924, Einstein received a letter from an unknown Indian scientist, in which the sender identified himself as a “complete stranger.” A follow-up letter contained a five-page article in which Bose addressed a flaw in quantum theory that Einstein had struggled to resolve for some years. Phil Mag had previously rejected the paper, prompting a confident Bose to forward it to Einstein for his approval.

Bose shared an extraordinary insight into the behavior of photons, particles of light, that no one before him had explained. He argued that photons did not follow the classical Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution, which was the standard for describing particle behavior. Instead, he proposed that indistinguishable particles could occupy the same quantum state, opening the way to a fundamentally new understanding of the quantum world. Einstein didn’t think Bose was right. But he wrote: “It was a nice step forward.” He also told his younger colleague that he would develop this idea in his own research. Einstein invited Bose from Paris to meet him in Berlin. Both men remain intellectually engaged.

A century later, there are lessons to be learned from how Dhaka has become part of the intellectual map of the world. The story of Bose’s contribution is not simply one of scientific achievement; it is a testimony of resilience, courage and self-confidence. Young people today should find inspiration in this spirit of confident conviction, especially those who fear that their ideas will not receive the necessary attention or appreciation. Bose teaches us that innovation does not require privilege or fame; it requires vision, passion and unwavering faith in one’s own abilities. And if we can dream, the world is not big enough.

Dr Shamsad Mortuza is a professor of English at the University of Dhaka.

The opinions expressed in the article are those of the author.

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