Sir J. C. Bose
Bose Research Institute, Calcutta
Life Movements in Plants (1918)
Sir J. C. Bose’s inaugural address to the dedication of Bose’s Institute on 30th November 1917.
The little we can see is nothing compared to the vastness of that which we cannot
Sir Bose’s investigations led him [unconsciously] into the spheres of physics and physiology where, in Bose’s own words, boundary lines and points of contact emerge between the Living and Non-living.
In his inaugural address, Bose reveals how his investigations led him towards the pursual of knowledge and drive to see truth. This was intensified by his view regarding the study of Nature with which he suggests requires dual viewpoints both alternating and interacting. One of biological thought with physical studies and the other of physical thought and biological studies.
The thrill in the matter, the throb of life, the pulse of growth, the impulse coursing thought the nerve and the resulting sensations, how diverse are these and yet how unified!
Bose’s investigations on response of “inorganic” matter have been followed by his study of activities of plant life in comparison with the functioning of animal life. He acknowledges that plants for the most part seem motionless and passive, and are indeed limited in their range of movement. He had to create special apparatus of extreme delicacy where he was able to magnify the tremor of excitation and also measure the perception period of a plant to a thousand part of a second.
These ultramicroscopic movements were measured and recorded, the length measured often being smaller than a fraction of a single wave-length of light. The secret of plant life was thus for the first time revealed by the autographs of the plant itself.
His investigations showed that all plants are fully alive to changes of environment; they response visibly to all stimuli. The plant growth and variations under different treatments were recorded by Bose’s Crescograph which was the first time one was able to analyse and study separately the conditions which modify rate of growth.
Bose measured the speed of nervous impulse in plants and found that the nervous impulse in plants and in man is found exalted or inhibited under identical conditions.