- Lived:
- 1 January 1894, Calcutta (Kolkata) – 4 February 1974, Calcutta; the decisive years in Dhaka, then spelled Dacca
- Field:
- theoretical physics — quantum statistics; also a lifelong campaigner for science in Bengali
- The Big Idea:
- Photons cannot be told apart, so they must be counted differently — and counted his way, the light-formula physicists had been fudging for twenty-four years falls out perfectly. Every particle that obeys his counting is now called a boson: half of everything there is.
- In their words:
- "I have got all the recognition I deserve" — his reply, late in life, when asked whether missing the Nobel Prize hurt.
- If you remember one thing:
- A physics Reader in Dacca whom one British journal had just rejected mailed four pages to Einstein with a polite covering letter; Einstein translated them into German himself, and physics has spoken Bengali ever since — every time it says boson.