Jagadish Chandra Bose was born in Mymensingh in Bengal (now in Bangladesh) on November 30, 1858. His father was leader of the Brahmo Samaj (a community of people who assemble for orderly public meeting, discussion or worship of the Eternal, Immutable Supreme Being, Author and Preserver of the Universe) and was a a deputy magistrate/ assistant commissioner. I can find nothing about his mother.
His family were quite well off but Jagadish received his early education from the local schools because his father believed that "one must know one's own mother tongue before beginning English, and one should know also one's own people".
Jagadish went on to the Hare School in 1869 and then St. Xaviers' College at Calcutta University in 1875. He received a B.A. in Science from Calcutta University in 1879.
In 1880 the twenty-two-year old Jagadish went to England to study Medicine at the University of London. However, he had to quit after just one year due to ill health. He then moved to Cambridge to take up a scholarship to study Natural Science at Christ's College Cambridge, where he graduated from in 1884 with a Natural Science Tripos (a special course of study).
In 1885 Jagadish returned to India, carrying a letter from Fawcett, the economist, to Lord Ripon, Viceroy of India. On Lord Ripon’s request the Director of Public Instruction, Sir Alfred Croft, appointed Jagadish the officiating professor of physics in Presidency College against the wishes of C. H. Tawney, the principal, who protested against the appointment but had to accept it. Jagadish was not provided with facilities for research, he was a "victim of racialism" with regard to his salary. In those days an Indian professor was paid Rs. 200 per month, while his European counterpart received Rs. 300. Since Jagadish was officiating, he was offered a salary of only Rs. 100 per month. With a remarkable sense of self respect and national pride he decided on a new form of protest, he refused to accept the salary cheque. In fact, he continued his teaching assignment for three years without accepting any salary. Finally both the Director of Public Instruction and the Principal of the Presidency College fully realised the value of Jagadishs' skill in teaching and his appointment was made permanent with retrospective effect. He was given the full salary for the previous three years in lumpsum.
In 1887, Jagadish married Abala, daughter of the renowned Brahmo reformer Durga Mohan Das. Abala was awarded a Bengal government scholarship in 1882 to study medicine in Madras (now Chennai), but had to quit because of ill health. At the time of their marriage Jagadish was in a financial trouble because of his refusal to accept his unequal salary and also because of some debts incurred by his father. The newly married couple faced privations, managed to survive and eventually repaid the debts of Jagadishs' father.
In 1894 Jagadish converted a small room at the college into a laboratory where he began carrying out a variety of experiments involving the refraction, diffraction, and polarisation of light. During the course of his research he developed the use of galena crystals for making receivers for use in detecting short wavelength radio waves as well as white and ultraviolet light. In 1895, Jagadish gave a public demonstration of electromagnetic waves, using them to ring a bell remotely and to explode some gunpowder.
Between 1894 and 1900, Jagadish researched radio waves, succeeding in creating waves as short as 5 mm. He also developed equipment for generating, transmitting, and receiving of radio waves, giving successful demonstrations several years before Guglielmo Marconi received patents for his work. Jagadish went on to use his equipment to demonstrate the properties of what we now call microwaves and was the first to use a semiconductor juntion to detect radio waves. Many of the microwave components he invented are still used in appliances today!
In 1904, Jagadish became the first Indian to receive a U.S. patent, for his electromagnetic radiation detector. The work he did in the field of electromagnetic radiation would eventually culminate in the development of semiconductors, and Jagadish is now considered one of the pioneering researchers in this field.
Jagadish retired in 1915, after some years of studying animal and plant physiology. He had studied the effects of electromagnetic radiation on plants, demonstrating that plants respond to various stimuli as if they have central nervous systems comparable to those of animals. During the course of that research he devised many delicate and sensitive instruments, including one which could actually record plant growth and magnify a small movement as much as a million times.
On his retirement Jagadish was appointed Emeritus Professor of Presidency College, for a period of five years. In 1917, he founded the Bose Research in Calcutta, the first scientific research institute on the Indian Subcontinent. He was knighted in 1917, and, in 1920, became the first Indian scientist to be elected to the prestigious Royal Society.
Jagadishs' place in history has been re-evaluated and he is credited with the invention of the first wireless detection device and the discovery of millimetre length electromagnetic waves and considered a pioneer in the field of biophysics. Many of his instruments are still on display and remain largely usable now, over 100 years after he made them. They include various antennas, polarisers, and waveguides, which remain in use in their modern forms today.
Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose died in Giridih, on November 23, 1937.