Somaditya (Soma) Banerjee at Aeon Magazine:
On a summer day in 1924, a young Indian physicist named Satyendra Nath Bose sent a paper and a letter to Albert Einstein. It would shape the nascent field of quantum mechanics and secure Bose a place in the annals of scientific history.
At the time, Bose was teaching in colonial India, thousands of miles from the centres of European science. In his letter, the 30-year-old Bose explained that he had found a more elegant way to derive one of the pivotal laws of physics (Planck’s law of radiation) and asked for Einstein’s help in publishing it. To Bose’s astonishment, Einstein replied enthusiastically. He translated Bose’s manuscript into German and arranged for it to be published in Zeitschrift für Physik, a leading physics journal of the time. Thus was born Bose-Einstein statistics, a cornerstone of quantum physics.
What made it so significant? In plain terms, Bose devised a new way to count and describe the behaviour of identical quantum particles, most famously, particles of light called photons.
more here.
Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.