The making of modern physics in colonial India / Somaditya Banerjee.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Banerjee, Somaditya, author.

Series:

Empires in perspective.

Empires in Perspective

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Physics.

Physics--India--History--20th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (221 pages).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2020.

Summary:

This monograph offers a cultural history of the development of physics in India during the first half of the twentieth century, focusing on Indian physicists Satyendranath Bose (1894-1974), Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman (1888-1970) and Meghnad Saha (1893-1956). The analytical category "bhadralok physics" is introduced to explore how it became possible for a highly successful brand of modern science to develop in a country that was still under colonial domination. The term Bhadralok refers to the then emerging group of native intelligentsia, who were identified by academic pursuits and manners. Exploring the forms of life of this social group allows a better understanding of the specific character of Indian modernity that, as exemplified by the work of bhadralok physicists, combined modern science with indigenous knowledge in an original program of scientific research. The three scientists achieved the most significant scientific successes in the new revolutionary field of quantum physics, with such internationally recognized accomplishments as the Saha ionization equation (1921), the famous Bose-Einstein statistics (1924), and the Raman Effect (1928), the latter discovery having led to the first ever Nobel Prize awarded to a scientist from Asia. This book analyzes the responses by Indian scientists to the radical concept of the light quantum, and their further development of this approach outside the purview of European authorities. The outlook of bhadralok physicists is characterized here as "cosmopolitan nationalism," which allows us to analyze how the group pursued modern science in conjunction with, and as an instrument of Indian national liberation.

Contents:

Cover

Endorsement Page

Half Title

Series Page

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Table of Contents

List of Figures

Preface and acknowledgments

List of Bengali and Sanskrit words

List of Abbreviations

Chapter 1 Introduction: Writing a history of modern science in South Asia

Overview

Reconfiguring the term bhadralok

History of physics

Postcolonial theory

Science studies in India

Bhadraloks, nationalism, and scientific modernity

Notes

Chapter 2 Bhadralok culture and the making of Satyendranath Bose

Bhadraloks, the Indian intelligentsia

The making of a modern Indian scientist

First appointment and training

The reception of relativity in India and the making of Bose

Chapter 3 Satyendranath Bose and the concept of light quantum

Local Visvajaneenata cosmopolitanism of Bose's science

Bose's physics

Years in Dhaka

Chapter 4 Colonial modernity and C.V. Raman: Verifying the light quantum

Biographical comments

En route towards the discovery of the Raman Effect

Building an international image

Explaining the effect

Raman Effect and Quantum Physics

The place of the Raman Effect in the history of quantum physics

Work by Landsberg and Mandelstam: The simultaneous discovery of Raman Effect, the Nobel Prize of 1930, and Stigler's Law of Eponymy

Sommerfeld and the reception of Raman's work in Germany: Orientalism and science

Between nationalism and regionalism

Chapter 5 Meghnad Saha: Applying the light quantum

The transition from shudra to bhadralok

Saha's scientific pursuits

Nationalism

After the European sojourn

Social dimensions of science: Rivers and water

Science and the nation

On the margins of the nation

Saha's scientism

Chapter 6 Reflections on bhadralok physics.

Satyendranath Bose: Counting modernity

C.V. Raman: Verifying modernity

Meghnad Saha: Applying modernity

Bibliography

Archives and special collections

Personal collections

Journal archives

Newspapers

Interviews

Secondary sources

Appendix

Index.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-317-02469-9

1-317-02470-2

1-315-55579-4

9781315555799

OCLC:

1155238007