Appendix.

Young India in Exact Science (1915-1921).

The following extracts are taken from the "World of Culture" section of the Collegian (Calcutta). The paragraphs appeared during the period from January 1920 to January 1922. 'Only a part of the work which Indian men of science have been doing in India or abroad and such as has been published in European or American scientific journals is announced in these notes. These, however, will not fail to furnish an index to the quality of the investigations.

On the Colours of the Striae in Mica.

In the Proceedings of the Royal Society (London), A. Vol. 96 we have a full investigation of the phenomenon of the coloured striae observed (when mica is examined by the Foucault Test) by. Phanindra Nath. Ghosh. A preliminary communication in Nature (November 14, 1918) by Chandrasekhar Venkata Raman and the present author briefly described the phenomenon.

The Geology of India.

The lack of a comprehensive and up to date manual accounts greatly for the indifference of college students to geology as a branch of study in the Indian universities. And yet geology is a "key" or basic science. The importance of geological knowledge, fundamental as it is, in the coming industrial revolution of the country, it is impossible to over-estimate. These are our uppermost thoughts while congratulating Professor D. N. Wadia of Kashmir on his Geology of India (London 1919). The chapters on physiography and economic geology will appeal to the general reader.

Indian Contributions to Recent Physics.

The vibrations of elastic shells partly filled with liquid form the subject of a paper in the Physical Review of the American Physical Society (March 1919) by Sudhansu Kumar Banerji, whose study of aerial waves generated by impact appeared in Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science (London) for July 1916 and January 1918. T. K. Chinmayanandam's investigation on the diffraction of light by an obliquely held cylinder, carried out in the laboratory of the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, Calcutta, was printed in the Physical Review for October 1918, which in its issue of January 1919 contained an article on the theory of superposed diffraction fringes by Chandi Prasad of Benares.

Besides publishing the contributions of Ganesh Prasad, D. N. Mallik and C. V. Raman, the Philosophical Magazine has "The Scattering of particles by Gases" by R. R. Sahni of Lahore (June 1915 and March 1917), Meghnad Saha's "Maxwell's Stresses" (March 1917), N. R. Sen's "Potentials of Uniform and Heterogeneous Elliptic Cylinders at an external point" (October 1919), and a note on the equivalent shell of a circular current by Satyendra Ray of Lucknow (January 1921). Meghnad Saha's contributions on the limit of interference in the Fabry-Perot Interferometer and on the mechanical and electrodynamic properties of the electron have been published in the Physical Review (Dec. 1917, Jan. and March 1919).

"Hindu" Talent in Industrial Chemistry.

As we are watching with interest Abinash Chandra Bhattacharyya's preparation of alcohol from mahua fruit, and Biman Chandra Ghosh's synthetic manufacture of garjjan oil for the treatment of leprosy, it would be quite in place here to announce the industrial achievements of our chemists such as are being recognized and commercialized in American factories. V. R. Kokatnur (of Bombay) has won distinction in an alkali firm at Niagara Falls which specializes in the manufacture of caustic soda and chlorine products. He is in charge of the organic research laboratory and has to direct and supervise the work of a number of American chemists.

At a symposium on "Electro-Chemistry after the war" held at Atlantic City (New Jersey, Oct. 1, 1918), Kokatnur presented a paper on "Commercial Uses of Chlorine," which may be read in the Transactions of the American Electro-Chemical Society, Vol. XXXIV. In the January number (1919) of the Journal of the American Chemical Society he has a paper on "The Influence of Catalysis on the Chlorination of Hydro-Carbons."

Another organic chemist, whose ability as supervisor and organizer of chemical talent has been tested in a carbolic acid plant, is Dhirendra Kumar Sarkar. His experience consists in developmental work in several factories (of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York) along the lines of coal tar, dyes, "intermediates," and recovery of cocoanut oil from copra. He is a specialist in the basic materials for the perfumery industry, e.g. in the distillation of sandal wood oil, oil of cloves etc. A manufacturing house of established reputation has bought one of Sarkar's processes in a synthetic pharmaceutical.

Journals of Indian Learned Societies.

The Calcutta Mathematical Society at its tenth annual meeting (Febr. 8, 1920) has urged upon all original investigators to publish their best productions in the scientific journals of India and not in foreign periodicals. The call is a timely one, foreshadowing, as it does, a move in the direction of India's self-assertion. And while we do not at all approve of the Secretary's statement that writing for foreign journals "may add to the glory of the individual author and is not after all so much a national gain", we strongly advocate every measure that is calculated to strengthen the hold of our learned societies and their journals on the corresponding institutions of the world.

A Mechanical Designer.

Akhil Chandra Chakravarty has designed at least twenty new (original) machines for the American company which employed him in Chicago. Chakravarty has taken patents on some of his inventions. His "Automatic Vacuum Soldering Machine" is intended for the canning industry. It is likely to replace old-style machines and save the labour of about 40 men.

Varied Experience of a Chemical Engineer.

Baneswar Dass made a special study of metals and alloys with reference to their acid-resisting properties. For some time he did development work in a scientific apparatus manufacturing company with success. Subsequently he was chief of control laboratory in a firm which manufactures synthetic phenol and phenol derivatives. Then he sought employment in one of the most influential concerns of the U. S. located in New Jersey, which first appointed him as chief chemist of the carbolic acid division and then promoted him to the position of chief chemist of the coal tar products division. Dass has developed a modification in the manufacturing process of synthetic phenol and has successfully worked out electrochemical problems, for instance, those in relation to waxes, shellac etc. for the composition of gramophone records, electrical storage batteries, and so forth.

Advance of Chemistry through Indian Research.

India has of late been quite in evidence in the world of chemistry. The papers contributed by our chemists are a regular feature not only of the Proceedings of the Chemical Society of London but also of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

The condensation of aromatic compounds is the subject of Sarat Chandra Chatterjee's and Ananda Kishore Das's investigations. Das in collaboration with Brojendra Nath Ghosh is also interested in the study of problems bearing on the electrolysis of water. Nihar Ranjan Chatterjee is engaged in the study of diketo-hydrindene. Panchanan Neogi's contributions to structural chemistry are well known. His researches lie in the field of organic nitrogen compounds.

Biman Bihari De and his colleagues are interesting themselves in the derivatives of benzene, while a new branch of chemistry is being opened up by Rasik Lal Datta in his series of investigations on the halogen family with special reference to the replacement of one member by another. His work in connection with the preparation of poison gas attracted the notice of the American Government during the war period. Datta's research is co-operative. With him have been working N. R. Chatterjee, Harabarbutty Kumar Mitter, Phuldeo Sahaya Varma, Tarapada Ghosh, Jnanendra Nath Sen, Nagendra Prasad and others.

A War Chemist of India.

As a member of the Niagara Alkali Works of Niagara Falls (N.Y.) V. R. Kokatnur did some work on poisonous gases and also completed a work on a super-mastard gas more deadly than the one in use. One of his processes was useful during the war in the varnish of aeroplane wings. It consisted in the manufacture of acetylene-tetra-chloride. This product had not been made in the U. S. before the war, and his was the first to put in operation. Kokatnur has other processes to his credit, e.g. those for manufacturing chlorine-resisting lubricants, benzoic acid, benzaldehyde, etc.

India in Recent Physics.

India is continuing to be in evidence in the scientific output of the contemporary world. Almost not a number of the Philosophical Magazine of London, which, by the bye, has nothing to do with "philosophy" as it is a journal of physics (its old name being "natural philosophy") without some contribution from Indian research. The January number of the present year (1920) has Satyendra Ray's "Equivalent Shell of a Circular Current" and C. V. Raman and Ashutosh Dey's "Sounds of Splashes", the February, D. N. Mallik and A. B. Das' "Quantum Theory of Electric Discharge", the April, Meghnad Saha and Satyendranath Basu's "On the Equation of the State" and the May, C. V. Raman's "Mechanical Violin-player of Acoustical Experiments."

The Science of the Violin.

"In regard to the scientific aspects of sound theory the foremost prominence must be given", says Science Progress (London) of April 1920, to C. V. Raman's memoir published by the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, Calcutta, in 1918. The study is a dissertation on the mechanical theory of the vibrations of bowed strings and of musical instruments. "A judicious combination of theory and experiment is used to elucidate the nature of the vibration of the violin. The equations of motion are written down and solved for the strings and the bridge respectively."

An Indian Achievement in Invention.

At a meeting of the Executive Board of the National Institute of Inventors (New York) the name of an Indian was submitted as an "Inventor of International Fame" for having invented the "Ideal Type-Casting Machine" (August 11th 1920). The name of this Indian inventor is Sankar Abaji Bisey, a Maratha engineer of Bombay.

The Single Type Casting Machine

Mr. Bisey has earned this recognition by inventing a mould, universally adjustable, which will cast types of all sizes. The basis of the present invention was the Multiple Type-Casting Machine, first constructed by him in 1903 while in England. But since then, it has been improved and modified until the offer of a "new problem" by the Universal Type-Casting Machine Company of New York. Bisey set himself to, and succeeded in, designing a thoroughly new machine (April 1917). This is altogether different from and independent of his old patents. The present consummation has been the dream of the world's inventors since the 30's of the last century.

Bisey's Inventions.

The world came to know of Bisey's work for the first time in 1895 when he exhibited optical illusions in London through his own invented machines. In 1897 he won a British prize by inventing a machine for automatically weighing and delivering powdered goods. In this he defeated eighteen European competitors. The inventions of the period from 1899 to 1908 were various automatic-advertising machines. Some of these are revolving lamps with lights of different colors for display, exhibited at the London Coronation Show, 1902. These were produced for the Bisey Inventions Syndicate in which Naoroji was financially interested. The type casting machines of the period were designed and manufactured under the auspices of the Biso-type Ltd of which Hyndman was the director. In the next series of inventions relating as they did to the improvement of type-casting machines, Tata's interest was awakened and the Tata-Bisey Inventions Syndicate was founded in London. Bisey is naturally a national hero among the Marathas. During his last sojourn in India in 1909 he was enthusiastically greeted with Marathi and English addresses. At the Indian Industrial Conference held in Madras in 1909 his work was brought to the notice of delegates by R. N. Mudholkar as president.

The Triumph of Jagadish Chunder Bose.

Once again has J. C. Bose's career been brought home to Young India with a message of aggressive energism and creative self-consciousness. The challenge which was thrown out to him in London from certain quarters of British science, although not without precedent in the scientific annals, is but typical of the tests to which Indians have perforce to submit the world over in every field of enterprise. The hopeful sign of the times, however, is that Indian merit is at last definitely on trial, and that India is getting a chance to be appraised by the world standard. And this circumstance is evoking the best that India is capable of. The greater the obstacles to the recognition of its achievements, the greater therefore is the will and determination to win it. Young India welcomes this struggle. And now that Bose has scored his triumph, the world of culture is going to be enriched by another chapter in the Expansion of India. Indian youths have not assimilated his philosophy of "Response" in vain.

The Bose Institute in the World of Science.

Investigations embodied in the Annals of the Bose Institute of Calcutta are awakening the interest of Europe in Young India's scientific attainments. The recent lecture tour (1920) of J. C. Bose in Sweden, Germany, and France has won for Hindu talent many warm admirers;—among them world-renowned scientists like Arrhenius, the physicist of Stockholm, Haberlandt, the physiologist of Berlin, and Deslanders, the physical astronomer of Paris. Dr. Bose was "solemnly" presented to the Académie des sciences by its president Mons. Deslanders.

Bose in British Journals.

Sir Richard Gregory, editor of Nature, compares the importance of Bose's discoveries to that of gravitation in physics. And Lewis Mumford, editor of the Sociological Review, writing in the Asiatic Review says that Geddes' description of Bose's work is an "exceedingly capable illumination of a field of scientific thought which has undergone a revolution comparable only to that which has taken place in mathematics and astronomy through the researches of Einstein."

Dr. Bose in Paris.

Last December (1920) on the invitation of Mons. Mangin, director of the Museum d'Histoire naturelle, Paris, Bose addressed a group of French biologists on the results of his latest researches. He gave also a public lecture at the Musée Guimet. In introducing the speaker, Daniel Berthelot, the chemist, said in part: "The waters of the Ganges have not yet ceased to be life-giving. Its currents are still needed for the inspiration and uplift of mankind."

An Indian at the Institut Pasteur.

An Indian doctor, Hemendra Nath Ghosh, late "house physician" of Carmichael Medical College Hospital, Belgatchia, Calcutta, is one of the assistants of Mons. Weinberg, who is in charge of the bacteriological laboratory at the Institut Pasteur of Paris. Ghosh is specially interested in the preparation of anti-serum and vaccine. His researches lie in the field of bacterial flora of appendicular abscess.¹

Researches in Pure Physics.

Two papers containing the results of research made by Mr. H. Parameswaran in the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, deserve notice. One of the papers, reprinted from the Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, deals with the "effect of a magnetic field on the intensity of the spectrum lines" and the other, which is extracted from the Philosophical Magazine, gives "An improved design from the friction cones of Searle's apparatus for mechanical equivalent of heat." We also learn that he read a paper on "A new type of interferometer" before a section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science during its last session at Cardiff.

Hindu Chemists before the American Chemical Society.

In the second week of September 1921 the American Chemical Society held its sixty second meeting at New York City.

At the symposium on vitamins in the division of biological chemistry Baneswar Dass of Bengal had a contribution on "food products rich in vitamins." V. R. Kokatnur of Bombay's paper on "the theory of molecular compound formation" was used in the section on physical and inorganic chemistry.

An Indian Physicist in Germany.

Megh Nad Saha is going back to India after six months of successful work in Germany. On the invitation of Professor Nernst, the greatest man of the world in Physikalische Chemie, Saha came to the University of Berlin as guest of the research department. Saha's investigations lie in the field of astrophysics. In Nernst's laboratory he obtained special facilities for working out several problems bearing on the application of thermodynamics to spectrum analysis. The results of his researches are to be published in the German journal of physics.

Saha's Lectures at German Universities.

Saha's work has served to attract the attention of scientific celebrities like Einstein (Berlin) and Sommerfeld (Munich) to the contributions of Young India to exact science. As readers of the Collegian are aware, Saha himself is well known in the world of science for his publications (since 1917) on Maxwell's stresses, electron, quantum theory, etc. in the Philosophical Magazine of London and the Physical Review and the Astro-Physical Journal of the United States.

Recently he was invited by the Physikalische Kolloquium of the Universities of Munich and Berlin to address the physicists on some of his latest researches. Saha summarized in German a part of his work done last year in the laboratory of the Imperial College of Science, London. The paper has been published in the Zeitschrift für Physik (Berlin, Band 6, Heft 1, 1921) as "Versuch einer Theorie der physikalischen Erscheinungen bei hohen Temperaturen mit Anwendung auf die Astrophysik (Attempt at a theory of physical phenomena at higher temperatures with applications in astro-physics).

The Late Ramanujan (1887-1920).

A very appreciative and extensive account of the work of the late Ramanujan, the first Indian F.R.S., appears in the Proceedings of the Royal Society (September 1, 1921) in the section on obituary notices. "I can compare him only with Euler or Jacobi", says G.H.H., the Cambridge mathematician, through whose interest Ramanujan was introduced to the world of science. He says further: "My belief is that all mathematicians think at bottom in the same kind of way and that Ramanujan was no exception." From 1914 to 1921 altogether 21 papers by Ramanujan have appeared in Europe. The Journal of the Mathematical Society (1911-1919) has published 12 papers from his pen.

Indian work in Biology.

Some very first class work is being done by Indian botanists and zoologists. The importance of their work is no less recognized in Europe and America than is that of our investigators in mathematics, physics and chemistry.

Contributions of the Punjab to Botany.

Sevaram Kasyap and Birbal Sahni of Lahore are two well known workers in botany. Kasyap's researches lie in the field of the organography of Himalayan cryptogams. His contributions published in the Annals of Botany (London) and the Proceedings of the Royal Society are highly spoken of by eminent botanists like Farmer and Oliver of London.

Birbal Sahni.

The Annals of Botany, No. 131, 1920, has published a paper on "certain archaic features in the seed of Taxus etc" by Sahni who has another article in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society No. 253, 1920. A whole volume of the Proceedings of the Royal Society is given over to Sahni's monograph on the "Phylogeny of the Gondawana Flora." Sahni is known among students as the author of a Text Book of Botany published by the Cambridge University Press.

An Indian Mycologist.

Readers of the Journal of the Indian Agricultural Society are familiar with the work done by J.F. Dastur, supernumerary mycologist at Pusa. He is chiefly interested in the sexology of pyronema confluens fungus. In the Annals of Botany for July 1921 Dastur has an article on "cytology of tilletia tritici (Bjerk) Wint. Laymen will understand in this paper only such facts as that the bunted wheat seeds required for the investigation were collected for the author by a professor in Australia in 1918 and that the authorities cited are French and German.

Zoological Investigations by Indians.

The entomological volume of Indian Fauna has recently been revised by Samarendra Chandra Maulik of Calcutta. The contributions have agricultural significance. Karamchand Bal, professor of zoology at Lucknow, is noted for his work on the nervous system of the earthworm.

Sarkar's Gland.

In physiology Bijuli Bihari Sarkar has been working in a field associated with the name of Professor Gley of College de France, viz., the internal secretion of glands. His investigations have led to the discovery of a gland which is now named after himself. The Proceedings of the Royal Society (Edinburgh) is to be consulted for an account of "Sarkar's Gland."

Other Workers.

Prabhat Chandra Sarvadhikari has been working on the cytology of ferns with Professor Farmer of Imperial College, London. At Berlin, Krishna Das Bagchi is interesting himself in genetical problems bearing on rachy.miosis. The work has importance in cotton cultivation. In the Botanical Institute of Berlin, likewise, Hara Prasad Chaudhuri is studying plant diseases. The investigation which is at present confined to (the mycology of) tomato and patato infection will hereafter be extended to the mango.

Young India in Science.

The Philosophical Magazine (London) of Sept. 1921 has a paper on the "variation of resistance of selenium with temperature" by Snehamoy Datta. B. N. Chakravarty's "diffraction of light incident at nearly the critical angle on the boundary between two media" appears in the Proceedings of the Royal Society (September 1, 1921).

Notes

1 Vide "Bacillus Reptans" by H. Ghosh in Comptes rendus des séances de la Société de Biologie (Séance du 6 mai 1922—Tome LXXXVI, p. 914).