HIGGS BOSON DISCOVERY AND SATYENDRANATH BOSE.

Scientists at the world’s biggest atom smashing facility at CERN ( European Center for Nuclear Research) claimed the discovery of a new subatomic particle on Wednesday. They found it to be “consistent” with the long-sought Higgs boson, popularly known as the “God particle” that helps explain what gives size and shape to all matter in the universe.

This is till now a theoretical particle which is seen as a key to understanding why matter has mass. It is as important as the Newtons discovery of gravity.

Six people, across three different teams, are credited with the discovery of Higgs Boson:

Robert Brout and François Englert of the Université Libre de Bruxelles—Belgium

Peter Higgs of University of Edinburgh—Scotland

G. S. Guralnik of Brown University---USA

C. R. Hagen of the University of Rochester--, New York, USA

Tom Kibble at Imperial College---London, UK

Boson was named after Satyendranath Bose an Indian scientist who was born in 1894 at Calcutta. He attended the Hindu School in Calcutta, followed by the Presidency College and was the topper in his class in both the institutions. Meghnad Saha, the famous Indian Astrophysicist was second in the class after Bose.

Along with Saha, Bose prepared the translation of the Special and General Theories of Relativity into English in 1919 based on the German and the French translations. He joined as a Reader in the University of Dhaka. Bose has set up many new departments for branches of Physics there. While working there Bose wrote a paper on deriving Planck’s Quantum Radiation Law. This paper gave rise to Bose-Einstein Statistics which were seminal in creating the field of Quantum Statistics.

This paper was not accepted for publication so Bose sent the paper to Einstein who recognizing its importance translated it into German and presented it on Bose’s behalf. As a result of this Bose got an opportunity to work in the famous European Laboratories where he associated with De Broglie, Marie Curie and Einstein. He later became the Head of the Department of Physics at Dhaka University and taught later at Calcutta University till 1956. He then became the Vice Chancellor of the Viswa Bharathi University. He died in 1974. Bosons are particles that obey Bose Einstein Statistics. The particle was named in his honor.