Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein | |
Albert Einstein, 1921 | |
Born | 14 March 1879(1879-03-14) |
Died | 18 April 1955 (aged 76) |
Residence | Germany, Italy, Switzerland, USA |
Citizenship | Württemberg/Germany (until 1896) |
Ethnicity | |
Fields | |
Institutions | Swiss Patent Office (Bern) |
Other academic advisors | |
Notable students | |
Known for | General relativity |
Notable awards | Nobel Prize in Physics (1921) |
Albert Einstein 14 March 1879–18 April 1955) was a German-born Swiss-American theoretical physicist, philosopher and author who is widely regarded as one of the most influential and best known scientists and intellectuals of all time. He is often regarded as the father of modern physics. He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect." His many contributions to physics include the special and general theories of relativity, the founding of relativistic cosmology, the first post-Newtonian expansion, explaining the perihelion advance of Mercury, prediction of the deflection of light by gravity and gravitational lensing, the first fluctuation dissipation theorem which explained the Brownian movement of molecules, the photon theory and wave-particle duality, the quantum theory of atomic motion in solids, the zero-point energy concept, the semiclassical version of the Schrödinger equation, and the quantum theory of a monatomic gas which predicted Bose–Einstein condensation.
Einstein published more than 300 scientific and over 150 non-scientific works.
Einstein Biography
Early life and education
father showed him a pocket
compass, and Einstein
realized that there must be
something causing the needle
to move, despite the apparent
“empty space.”
Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, in the Kingdom of Württemberg in the German Empire on 14 March 1879. His father was Hermann Einstein, a salesman and engineer. His mother was Pauline Einstein (née Koch). In 1880, the family moved to Munich, where his father and his uncle founded Elektrotechnische Fabrik J. Einstein & Cie, a company that manufactured electrical equipment based on direct current.
14).
The Einsteins were non-observant Jews. Their son attended a Catholic elementary school from the age of five until ten. Although Einstein had early speech difficulties, he was a top student in elementary school. As he grew, Einstein built models and mechanical devices for fun and began to show a talent for mathematics. In 1889 Max Talmud (later changed to Max Talmey) introduced the ten-year old Einstein to key texts in science, mathematics and philosophy, including Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and Euclid’s Elements (which Einstein called the "holy little geometry book"). Talmud was a poor Jewish medical student from Poland. The Jewish community arranged for Talmud to take meals with the Einsteins each week on Thursdays for six years. During this time Talmud wholeheartedly guided Einstein through many secular educational interests.
In 1894, his father’s company failed: Direct current (DC) lost the War of Currents to alternating current (AC). In search of business, the Einstein family moved to Italy, first to Milan and then, a few months later, to Pavia. When the family moved to Pavia, Einstein stayed in Munich to finish his studies at the Luitpold Gymnasium. His father intended for him to pursue electrical engineering, but Einstein clashed with authorities and resented the school’s regimen and teaching method. He later wrote that the spirit of learning and creative thought were lost in strict rote learning. In the spring of 1895, he withdrew to join his family in Pavia, convincing the school to let him go by using a doctor’s note. During this time, Einstein wrote his first scientific work, "The Investigation of the State of Aether in Magnetic Fields".
Einstein applied directly to the Eidgenössische Polytechnische Schule (ETH) in Zürich, Switzerland. Lacking the requisite Matura certificate, he took an entrance examination, which he failed, although he got exceptional marks in mathematics and physics. The Einsteins sent Albert to Aarau, in northern Switzerland to finish secondary school. While lodging with the family of Professor Jost Winteler, he fell in love with the family’s daughter, Marie. (His sister Maja later married the Winteler son, Paul.) In Aarau, Einstein studied Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory. At age 17, he graduated, and, with his father’s approval, renounced his citizenship in the German Kingdom of Württemberg to avoid military service, and enrolled in 1896 in the mathematics and physics program at the Polytechnic in Zurich. Marie Winteler moved to Olsberg, Switzerland for a teaching post.
In the same year, Einstein’s future wife, Mileva Marić, also entered the Polytechnic to study mathematics and physics, the only woman in the academic cohort. Over the next few years, Einstein and Marić’s friendship developed into romance. In a letter to her, Einstein called Marić “a creature who is my equal and who is as strong and independent as I am.” Einstein graduated in 1900 from the Polytechnic with a diploma in mathematics and physics; Although historians have debated whether Marić influenced Einstein’s work, the majority of academic historians of science agree that she did not.
Marriages and children
In early 1902, Einstein and Mileva Marić had a daughter they named Lieserl in their correspondence, who was born in Novi Sad where Marić's parents lived.22] Her full name is not known, and her fate is uncertain after 1903.
Einstein and Marić married in January 1903. In May 1904, the couple’s first son, Hans Albert Einstein, was born in Bern, Switzerland. Their second son, Eduard, was born in Zurich in July 1910. In 1914, Einstein moved to Berlin, while his wife remained in Zurich with their sons. Marić and Einstein divorced on 14 February 1919, having lived apart for five years.
Einstein married Elsa Löwenthal (née Einstein) on 2 June 1919, after having had a relationship with her since 1912. She was his first cousin maternally and his second cousin paternally. In 1933, they emigrated permanently to the United States. In 1935, Elsa Einstein was diagnosed with heart and kidney problems and died in December 1936.
Patent office
Left to right: Conrad Habicht, Maurice
Solovine and Einstein, who founded the
Olympia Academy
After graduating, Einstein spent almost two frustrating years searching for a teaching post, but a former classmate’s father helped him secure a job in Bern, at the Federal Office for Intellectual Property, the patent office, as an assistant examiner. He evaluated patent applications for electromagnetic devices. In 1903, Einstein’s position at the Swiss Patent Office became permanent, although he was passed over for promotion until he "fully mastered machine technology".
His home at Einsteinhaus in Bern
Much of his work at the patent office related to questions about transmission of electric signals and electrical-mechanical synchronization of time, two technical problems that show up conspicuously in the thought experiments that eventually led Einstein to his radical conclusions about the nature of light and the fundamental connection between space and time.
With friends he met in Bern, Einstein formed a weekly discussion club on science and philosophy, which he jokingly named "The Olympia Academy." Their readings included the works of Henri Poincaré, Ernst Mach, and David Hume, which influenced his scientific and philosophical outlook.
Academic career
In 1901, Einstein had a paper on the capillary forces of a straw published in the prestigious Annalen der Physik. In 1905, he received his doctorate from the University of Zurich. His thesis was titled "On a new determination of molecular dimensions". That same year, which has been called Einstein's annus mirabilis or "miracle year", he published four groundbreaking papers, on the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, special relativity, and the equivalence of matter and energy, which were to bring him to the notice of the academic world.
By 1908, he was recognized as a leading scientist, and he was appointed lecturer at the University of Berne. The following year, he quit the patent office and the lectureship to take the position of physics professor at the University of Zurich. He became a full professor at Karl-Ferdinand University in Prague in 1911. In 1914, he returned to Germany after being appointed director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics and professor at the University of Berlin.
In 1911, he had calculated that, based on his new theory of general relativity, light from another star would be bent by the Sun's gravity. That prediction was claimed confirmed by observations made by a British expedition led by Sir Arthur Eddington during the solar eclipse of May 29, 1919. International media reports of this made Einstein world famous. (Much later, questions were raised whether the measurements were accurate enough to support such a claim.)
In 1921, Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. Because relativity was still considered somewhat controversial, it was officially bestowed for his explanation of the photoelectric effect. He also received the Copley Medal from the Royal Society in 1925.
Emigration to the United States
Being protected in England after
escaping Na zi Germany in 1933
In 1933, Einstein was compelled to emigrate to the United States due to the rise to power of the Nazis under Germany's new chancellor, Adolf Hitler. While visiting American universities in April, 1933, he learned that the new German government passed a law barring Jews from holding any official positions, including teaching at universities. A month later, notes Einstien biographer, Walter Isaacson, "a parade of swastica-wearing students and beer-hall thugs carrying torches tossed books into a huge bonfire. Ordinary citizens poured forth carrying volumes looted from libraries and private homes. 'Jewish intellectualism is dead,' propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, his face fiery, yelled from the podium." Einstein also learned that his name was on a list of assassination targets, with a "$5,000 bounty on his head." One German magazine included him in a list of enemies of the German regime with the phrase, "not yet hanged."
Among other German scientists also forced to flee were fourteen Nobel laureates and twenty-six of the sixty professors of theoretical physics in the country. Among the other scientists who left were Edward Teller, Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi, Otto Stern, Victor Weisskopf, Hans Bethe, and Lise Meitner, many of whom made certain that the Allies would develop nuclear weapons first, before the Nazis. With so many other Jewish scientists now forced by circumstances to live in America, often working side by side, Einstein wrote to a friend, "For me the most beautiful thing is to be in contact with a few fine Jews—a few millennia of a civilized past do mean something after all." In another letter he writes, "In my whole life I have never felt so Jewish as now."
Einstein with David Ben Gurion, 1951
He took up a position at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey, an affiliation that lasted until his death in 1955. There, he tried unsuccessfully to develop a unified field theory and to refute the accepted interpretation of quantum physics.
He and Kurt Gödel, another Institute member, became close friends. They would take long walks together discussing their work.
Just prior to the beginning of World War II in Europe, Einstein was persuaded to lend his enormous prestige to a letter sent to President Franklin D. Roosevelt on August 2, 1939, alerting him to the possibility that Nazi Germany might be developing an atomic bomb.
In 1940, he became an American citizen.
In 1952, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion offered him the position of President of Israel after the death of the first president, Chaim Weizman. He declined, writing, "I am deeply moved by the offer from our State of Israel, and at once saddened and ashamed that I cannot accept it." He explained, "I have neither the natural ability nor the experience to deal with human beings."
Death
Einstein's residence in Princeton
On 17 April 1955, Albert Einstein experienced internal bleeding caused by the rupture of an abdominal aortic aneurysm, which had previously been reinforced surgically by Dr. Rudolph Nissen in 1948. He took the draft of a speech he was preparing for a television appearance commemorating the State of Israel’s seventh anniversary with him to the hospital, but he did not live long enough to complete it. Einstein refused surgery, saying: "I want to go when I want. It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share, it is time to go. I will do it elegantly." He died in Princeton Hospital early the next morning at the age of 76, having continued to work until near the end. Einstein’s remains were cremated and his ashes were scattered around the grounds of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey. During the autopsy, the pathologist of Princeton Hospital, Thomas Stoltz Harvey removed Einstein’s brain for preservation, without the permission of his family, in hope that the neuroscience of the future would be able to discover what made Einstein so intelligent.
Scientific career
Throughout his life, Einstein published hundreds of books and articles. Most were about physics, but a few expressed leftist political opinions about pacifism, socialism, and zionism. In addition to the work he did by himself he also collaborated with other scientists on additional projects including the Bose–Einstein statistics, the Einstein refrigerator and others.
Physics in 1900
Einstein’s early papers all come from attempts to demonstrate that atoms exist and have a finite nonzero size. At the time of his first paper in 1902, it was not yet completely accepted by physicists that atoms were real, even though chemists had good evidence ever since Antoine Lavoisier’s work a century earlier. The reason physicists were skeptical was because no 19th century theory could fully explain the properties of matter from the properties of atoms.
Ludwig Boltzmann was a leading 19th century atomist physicist, who had struggled for years to gain acceptance for atoms. Boltzmann had given an interpretation of the laws of thermodynamics, suggesting that the law of entropy increase is statistical. In Boltzmann’s way of thinking, the entropy is the logarithm of the number of ways a system could be configured inside. The reason the entropy goes up is only because it is more likely for a system to go from a special state with only a few possible internal configurations to a more generic state with many. While Boltzmann’s statistical interpretation of entropy is universally accepted today, and Einstein believed it, at the turn of the 20th century it was a minority position.
The statistical idea was most successful in explaining the properties of gases. James Clerk Maxwell, another leading atomist, had found the distribution of velocities of atoms in a gas, and derived the surprising result that the viscosity of a gas should be independent of density. Intuitively, the friction in a gas would seem to go to zero as the density goes to zero, but this is not so, because the mean free path of atoms becomes large at low densities. A subsequent experiment by Maxwell and his wife confirmed this surprising prediction. Other experiments on gases and vacuum, using a rotating slitted drum, showed that atoms in a gas had velocities distributed according to Maxwell’s distribution law.
In addition to these successes, there were also inconsistencies. Maxwell noted that at cold temperatures, atomic theory predicted specific heats that are too large. In classical statistical mechanics, every spring-like motion has thermal energy kBT on average at temperature T, so that the specific heat of every spring is Boltzmann’s constant kB. A monatomic solid with N atoms can be thought of as N little balls representing N atoms attached to each other in a box grid with 3N springs, so the specific heat of every solid is 3NkB, a result which became known as the Dulong–Petit law. This law is true at room temperature, but not for colder temperatures. At temperatures near zero, the specific heat goes to zero.
Similarly, a gas made up of a molecule with two atoms can be thought of as two balls on a spring. This spring has energy kBT at high temperatures, and should contribute an extra kB to the specific heat. It does at temperatures of about 1000 degrees, but at lower temperature, this contribution disappears. At zero temperature, all other contributions to the specific heat from rotations and vibrations also disappear. This behavior was inconsistent with classical physics.
The most glaring inconsistency was in the theory of light waves. Continuous waves in a box can be thought of as infinitely many spring-like motions, one for each possible standing wave. Each standing wave has a specific heat of kB, so the total specific heat of a continuous wave like light should be infinite in classical mechanics. This is obviously wrong, because it would mean that all energy in the universe would be instantly sucked up into light waves, and everything would slow down and stop.
These inconsistencies led some people to say that atoms were not physical, but mathematical. Notable among the skeptics was Ernst Mach, whose positivist philosophy led him to demand that if atoms are real, it should be possible to see them directly. Mach believed that atoms were a useful fiction, that in reality they could be assumed to be infinitesimally small, that Avogadro’s number was infinite, or so large that it might as well be infinite, and kB was infinitesimally small. Certain experiments could then be explained by atomic theory, but other experiments could not, and this is the way it will always be.
Einstein opposed this position. Throughout his career, he was a realist. He believed that a single consistent theory should explain all observations, and that this theory would be a description of what was really going on, underneath it all. So he set out to show that the atomic point of view was correct. This led him first to thermodynamics, then to statistical physics, and to the theory of specific heats of solids.
In 1905, while he was working in the patent office, the leading German language physics journal Annalen der Physik published four of Einstein’s papers. The four papers eventually were recognized as revolutionary, and 1905 became known as Einstein’s "Miracle Year", and the papers as the Annus Mirabilis Papers.
Albert Einstein, 1905, The Miracle Year. On 30 April 1905, Einstein completed his thesis with Alfred Kleiner, Professor of Experimental Physics, serving as pro-forma advisor. Einstein was awarded a PhD by the University of Zurich. His dissertation was entitled A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions.
Thermodynamic fluctuations and statistical physics
Einstein’s earliest papers were concerned with thermodynamics. He wrote a paper establishing a thermodynamic identity in 1902, and a few other papers which attempted to interpret phenomena from a statistical atomic point of view.
His research in 1903 and 1904 was mainly concerned with the effect of finite atomic size on diffusion phenomena. As in Maxwell’s work, the finite nonzero size of atoms leads to effects which can be observed. This research, and the thermodynamic identity, were well within the mainstream of physics in his time. They would eventually form the content of his PhD thesis.
His first major result in this field was the theory of thermodynamic fluctuations. When in equilibrium, a system has a maximum entropy and, according to the statistical interpretation, it can fluctuate a little bit. Einstein pointed out that the statistical fluctuations of a macroscopic object, like a mirror suspended on spring, would be completely determined by the second derivative of the entropy with respect to the position of the mirror.
Searching for ways to test this relation, his great breakthrough came in 1905. The theory of fluctuations, he realized, would have a visible effect for an object which could move around freely. Such an object would have a velocity which is random, and would move around randomly, just like an individual atom. The average kinetic energy of the object would be kBT, and the time decay of the fluctuations would be entirely determined by the law of friction.
The law of friction for a small ball in a viscous fluid like water was discovered by George Stokes. He showed that for small velocities, the friction force would be proportional to the velocity, and to the radius of the particle. This relation could be used to calculate how far a small ball in water would travel due to its random thermal motion, and Einstein noted that such a ball, of size about a micron, would travel about a few microns per second. This motion could be easily detected with a microscope and indeed, as Brownian motion, had actually been observed by the botanist Robert Brown. Einstein was able to identify this motion with that predicted by his theory. Since the fluctuations which give rise to Brownian motion are just the same as the fluctuations of the velocities of atoms, measuring the precise amount of Brownian motion using Einstein’s theory would show that Boltzmann’s constant is non-zero and would measure Avogadro’s number.
These experiments were carried out a few years later, and gave a rough estimate of Avogadro’s number consistent with the more accurate estimates due to Max Planck’s theory of blackbody light, and Robert Millikan’s measurement of the charge of the electron. Unlike the other methods, Einstein’s required very few theoretical assumptions or new physics, since it was directly measuring atomic motion on visible grains.
Einstein’s theory of Brownian motion was the first paper in the field of statistical physics. It established that thermodynamic fluctuations were related to dissipation. This was shown by Einstein to be true for time-independent fluctuations, but in the Brownian motion paper he showed that dynamical relaxation rates calculated from classical mechanics could be used as statistical relaxation rates to derive dynamical diffusion laws. These relations are known as Einstein relations.
The theory of Brownian motion was the least revolutionary of Einstein’s Annus mirabilis papers, but it had an important role in securing the acceptance of the atomic theory by physicists.
Thought experiments and a-priori physical principles
Einstein’s thinking underwent a transformation in 1905. He had come to understand that quantum properties of light mean that Maxwell’s equations were only an approximation. He knew that new laws would have to replace these, but he did not know how to go about finding those laws. He felt that guessing formal relations would not go anywhere.
So he decided to focus on a-priori principles instead, which are statements about physical laws which can be understood to hold in a very broad sense even in domains where they have not yet been shown to apply. A well accepted example of an a-priori principle is rotational invariance. If a new force is discovered in physics, it is assumed to be rotationally invariant almost automatically, without thought. Einstein sought new principles of this sort, to guide the production of physical ideas. Once enough principles are found, then the new physics will be the simplest theory consistent with the principles and with previously known laws.
The first general a-priori principle he found was the principle of relativity, that uniform motion is indistinguishable from rest. This was understood by Hermann Minkowski to be a generalization of rotational invariance from space to space-time. Other principles postulated by Einstein and later vindicated are the principle of equivalence and the principle of adiabatic invariance of the quantum number. Another of Einstein’s general principles, Mach’s principle, is fiercely debated, and whether it holds in our world or not is still not definitively established.
The use of a-priori principles is a distinctive unique signature of Einstein’s early work, and has become a standard tool in modern theoretical physics.
Special relativity
His 1905 paper on the electrodynamics of moving bodies introduced his theory of special relativity, which showed that the observed independence of the speed of light on the observer’s state of motion required fundamental changes to the notion of simultaneity. Consequences of this include the time-space frame of a moving body slowing down and contracting (in the direction of motion) relative to the frame of the observer. This paper also argued that the idea of a luminiferous aether – one of the leading theoretical entities in physics at the time – was superfluous. In his paper on mass–energy equivalence, which had previously been considered to be distinct concepts, Einstein deduced from his equations of special relativity what has been called the twentieth century’s best-known equation: E = mc2. This equation suggests that tiny amounts of mass could be converted into huge amounts of energy and presaged the development of nuclear power. Einstein’s 1905 work on relativity remained controversial for many years, but was accepted by leading physicists, starting with Max Planck.
Photons
In a 1905 paper, Einstein postulated that light itself consists of localized particles (quanta). Einstein’s light quanta were nearly universally rejected by all physicists, including Max Planck and Niels Bohr. This idea only became universally accepted in 1919, with Robert Millikan’s detailed experiments on the photoelectric effect, and with the measurement of Compton scattering.
Einstein’s paper on the light particles was almost entirely motivated by thermodynamic considerations. He was not at all motivated by the detailed experiments on the photoelectric effect, which did not confirm his theory until fifteen years later. Einstein considers the entropy of light at temperature T, and decomposes it into a low-frequency part and a high-frequency part. The high-frequency part, where the light is described by Wien’s law, has an entropy which looks exactly the same as the entropy of a gas of classical particles.
Since the entropy is the logarithm of the number of possible states, Einstein concludes that the number of states of short wavelength light waves in a box with volume V is equal to the number of states of a group of localizable particles in the same box. Since (unlike others) he was comfortable with the statistical interpretation, he confidently postulates that the light itself is made up of localized particles, as this is the only reasonable interpretation of the entropy.
This leads him to conclude that each wave of frequency f is associated with a collection of photons with energy hf each, where h is Planck’s constant. He does not say much more, because he is not sure how the particles are related to the wave. But he does suggest that this idea would explain certain experimental results, notably the photoelectric effect.
Quantized atomic vibrations
Einstein continued his work on quantum mechanics in 1906, by explaining the specific heat anomaly in solids. This was the first application of quantum theory to a mechanical system. Since Planck’s distribution for light oscillators had no problem with infinite specific heats, the same idea could be applied to solids to fix the specific heat problem there. Einstein showed in a simple model that the hypothesis that solid motion is quantized explains why the specific heat of a solid goes to zero at zero temperature.
Einstein’s model treats each atom as connected to a single spring. Instead of connecting all the atoms to each other, which leads to standing waves with all sorts of different frequencies, Einstein imagined that each atom was attached to a fixed point in space by a spring. This is not physically correct, but it still predicts that the specific heat is 3NkB, since the number of independent oscillations stays the same.
Einstein then assumes that the motion in this model is quantized, according to the Planck law, so that each independent spring motion has energy which is an integer multiple of hf, where f is the frequency of oscillation. With this assumption, he applied Boltzmann’s statistical method to calculate the average energy of the spring. The result was the same as the one that Planck had derived for light: for temperatures where kBT is much smaller than hf, the motion is frozen, and the specific heat goes to zero.
So Einstein concluded that quantum mechanics would solve the main problem of classical physics, the specific heat anomaly. The particles of sound implied by this formulation are now called phonons. Because all of Einstein’s springs have the same stiffness, they all freeze out at the same temperature, and this leads to a prediction that the specific heat should go to zero exponentially fast when the temperature is low. The solution to this problem is to solve for the independent normal modes individually, and to quantize those. Then each normal mode has a different frequency, and long wavelength vibration modes freeze out at colder temperatures than short wavelength ones. This was done by Debye, and after this modification Einstein’s quantization method reproduced quantitatively the behavior of the specific heats of solids at low temperatures.
This work was the foundation of condensed matter physics.
Adiabatic principle and action-angle variables
Throughout the 1910s, quantum mechanics expanded in scope to cover many different systems. After Ernest Rutherford discovered the nucleus and proposed that electrons orbit like planets, Niels Bohr was able to show that the same quantum mechanical postulates introduced by Planck and developed by Einstein would explain the discrete motion of electrons in atoms, and the periodic table of the elements.
Einstein contributed to these developments by linking them with the 1898 arguments Wilhelm Wien had made. Wien had shown that the hypothesis of adiabatic invariance of a thermal equilibrium state allows all the blackbody curves at different temperature to be derived from one another by a simple shifting process. Einstein noted in 1911 that the same adiabatic principle shows that the quantity which is quantized in any mechanical motion must be an adiabatic invariant. Arnold Sommerfeld identified this adiabatic invariant as the action variable of classical mechanics. The law that the action variable is quantized was the basic principle of the quantum theory as it was known between 1900 and 1925.
Wave-particle duality
Although the patent office promoted Einstein to Technical Examiner Second Class in 1906, he had not given up on academia. In 1908, he became a privatdozent at the University of Bern.52] In "über die Entwicklung unserer Anschauungen über das Wesen und die Konstitution der Strahlung" ("The Development of Our Views on the Composition and Essence of Radiation"), on the quantization of light, and in an earlier 1909 paper, Einstein showed that Max Planck’s energy quanta must have well-defined momenta and act in some respects as independent, point-like particles. This paper introduced the photon concept (although the name photon was introduced later by Gilbert N. Lewis in 1926) and inspired the notion of wave-particle duality in quantum mechanics.
Theory of critical opalescence
Einstein returned to the problem of thermodynamic fluctuations, giving a treatment of the density variations in a fluid at its critical point. Ordinarily the density fluctuations are controlled by the second derivative of the free energy with respect to the density. At the critical point, this derivative is zero, leading to large fluctuations. The effect of density fluctuations is that light of all wavelengths is scattered, making the fluid look milky white. Einstein relates this to Raleigh scattering, which is what happens when the fluctuation size is much smaller than the wavelength, and which explains why the sky is blue.
Einstein at the Solvay conference in 1911. That year he became an associate professor at the University of Zurich and shortly afterwards, he accepted a full professorship at the German Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague.
Zero-point energy
Einstein’s physical intuition led him to note that Planck’s oscillator energies had an incorrect zero point. He modified Planck’s hypothesis by stating that the lowest energy state of an oscillator is equal to 1⁄2hf, to half the energy spacing between levels. This argument, which was made in 1913 in collaboration with Otto Stern, was based on the thermodynamics of a diatomic molecule which can split apart into two free atoms.
Principle of equivalence
In 1907, while still working at the patent office, Einstein had what he would call his "happiest thought". He realized that the principle of relativity could be extended to gravitational fields. He thought about the case of a uniformly accelerated box not in a gravitational field, and noted that it would be indistinguishable from a box sitting still in an unchanging gravitational field. He used special relativity to see that the rate of clocks at the top of a box accelerating upward would be faster than the rate of clocks at the bottom. He concludes that the rates of clocks depend on their position in a gravitational field, and that the difference in rate is proportional to the gravitational potential to first approximation.
Although this approximation is crude, it allowed him to calculate the deflection of light by gravity, and show that it is nonzero. This gave him confidence that the scalar theory of gravity proposed by Gunnar Nordström was incorrect. But the actual value for the deflection that he calculated was too small by a factor of two, because the approximation he used doesn’t work well for things moving at near the speed of light. When Einstein finished the full theory of general relativity, he would rectify this error and predict the correct amount of light deflection by the sun.
From Prague, Einstein published a paper about the effects of gravity on light, specifically the gravitational redshift and the gravitational deflection of light. The paper challenged astronomers to detect the deflection during a solar eclipse. German astronomer Erwin Finlay-Freundlich publicized Einstein’s challenge to scientists around the world.
Einstein thought about the nature of the gravitational field in the years 1909–1912, studying its properties by means of simple thought experiments. A notable one is the rotating disk. Einstein imagined an observer making experiments on a rotating turntable. He noted that such an observer would find a different value for the mathematical constant pi than the one predicted by Euclidean geometry. The reason is that the radius of a circle would be measured with an uncontracted ruler, but, according to special relativity, the circumference would seem to be longer because the ruler would be contracted.
Since Einstein believed that the laws of physics were local, described by local fields, he concluded from this that spacetime could be locally curved. This led him to study Riemannian geometry, and to formulate general relativity in this language.
Hole argument and Entwurf theory
While developing general relativity, Einstein became confused about the gauge invariance in the theory. He formulated an argument that led him to conclude that a general relativistic field theory is impossible. He gave up looking for fully generally covariant tensor equations, and searched for equations that would be invariant under general linear transformations only.
The Entwurf ("draft") theory was the result of these investigations. As its name suggests, it was a sketch of a theory, with the equations of motion supplemented by additional gauge fixing conditions. Simultaneously less elegant and more difficult than general relativity, Einstein abandoned the theory after realizing that the hole argument was mistaken.
General relativity
In 1912, Einstein returned to Switzerland to accept a professorship at his alma mater, the ETH. Once back in Zurich, he immediately visited his old ETH classmate Marcel Grossmann, now a professor of mathematics, who introduced him to Riemannian geometry and, more generally, to differential geometry. On the recommendation of Italian mathematician Tullio Levi-Civita, Einstein began exploring the usefulness of general covariance (essentially the use of tensors) for his gravitational theory. For a while Einstein thought that there were problems with the approach, but he later returned to it and, by late 1915, had published his general theory of relativity in the form in which it is used today. This theory explains gravitation as distortion of the structure of spacetime by matter, affecting the inertial motion of other matter. During World War I, the work of Central Powers scientists was available only to Central Powers academics, for national security reasons. Some of Einstein’s work did reach the United Kingdom and the United States through the efforts of the Austrian Paul Ehrenfest and physicists in the Netherlands, especially 1902 Nobel Prize-winner Hendrik Lorentz and Willem de Sitter of Leiden University. After the war ended, Einstein maintained his relationship with Leiden University, accepting a contract as an Extraordinary Professor; for ten years, from 1920 to 1930, he travelled to Holland regularly to lecture.
In 1917, several astronomers accepted Einstein ’s 1911 challenge from Prague. The Mount Wilson Observatory in California, U.S., published a solar spectroscopic analysis that showed no gravitational redshift. In 1918, the Lick Observatory, also in California, announced that it too had disproved Einstein’s prediction, although its findings were not published.
Eddington’s photograph of a solar eclipse, which confirmed Einstein’s theory that light “bends.” On 7th November 1919, the leading British newspaper The Times printed a banner headline that read: “Revolution in Science – New Theory of the Universe – Newtonian Ideas Overthrown.”
However, in May 1919, a team led by the British astronomer Arthur Stanley Eddington claimed to have confirmed Einstein’s prediction of gravitational deflection of starlight by the Sun while photographing a solar eclipse with dual expeditions in Sobral, northern Brazil, and Príncipe, a west African island. Nobel laureate Max Born praised general relativity as the "greatest feat of human thinking about nature"; fellow laureate Paul Dirac was quoted saying it was "probably the greatest scientific discovery ever made". The international media guaranteed Einstein’s global renown.
There have been claims that scrutiny of the specific photographs taken on the Eddington expedition showed the experimental uncertainty to be comparable to the same magnitude as the effect Eddington claimed to have demonstrated, and that a 1962 British expedition concluded that the method was inherently unreliable. The deflection of light during a solar eclipse was confirmed by later, more accurate observations. Some resented the newcomer’s fame, notably among some German physicists, who later started the Deutsche Physik (German Physics) movement.
Cosmology
In 1917, Einstein applied the General theory of relativity to model the structure of the universe as a whole. He wanted the universe to be eternal and unchanging, but this type of universe is not consistent with relativity. To fix this, Einstein modified the general theory by introducing a new notion, the cosmological constant. With a positive cosmological constant, the universe could be an eternal static sphere
Einstein believed a spherical static universe is philosophically preferred, because it would obey Mach’s principle. He had shown that general relativity incorporates Mach’s principle to a certain extent in frame dragging by gravitomagnetic fields, but he knew that Mach’s idea would not work if space goes on forever. In a closed universe, he believed that Mach’s principle would hold.
Mach’s principle has generated much controversy over the years.
After her husband’s many relocations, Mileva established a permanent home with the children in Zürich in 1914. Einstein went alone to Berlin, where he became a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences and a professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin, although with a special clause in his contract that freed him from most teaching obligations. Einstein was president of the German Physical Society (1916–1918) and also directed the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics (1914–1932).
Modern quantum theory
In 1917, at the height of his work on relativity, Einstein published an article in Physikalische Zeitschrift that proposed the possibility of stimulated emission, the physical process that makes possible the maser and the laser. This article showed that the statistics of absorption and emission of light would only be consistent with Planck’s distribution law if the emission of light into a mode with n photons would be enhanced statistically compared to the emission of light into an empty mode. This paper was enormously influential in the later development of quantum mechanics, because it was the first paper to show that the statistics of atomic transitions had simple laws. Einstein discovered Louis de Broglie’s work, and supported his ideas, which were received skeptically at first. In another major paper from this era, Einstein gave a wave equation for de Broglie waves, which Einstein suggested was the Hamilton–Jacobi equation of mechanics. This paper would inspire Schrödinger’s work of 1926.
Bose–Einstein statistics
In 1924, Einstein received a description of a statistical model from Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose, based on a counting method that assumed that light could be understood as a gas of indistinguishable particles. Einstein noted that Bose’s statistics applied to some atoms as well as to the proposed light particles, and submitted his translation of Bose’s paper to the Zeitschrift für Physik. Einstein also published his own articles describing the model and its implications, among them the Bose–Einstein condensate phenomenon that some particulates should appear at very low temperatures. It was not until 1995 that the first such condensate was produced experimentally by Eric Allin Cornell and Carl Wieman using ultra-cooling equipment built at the NIST–JILA laboratory at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Bose–Einstein statistics are now used to describe the behaviors of any assembly of bosons. Einstein’s sketches for this project may be seen in the Einstein Archive in the library of the Leiden University.
Energy momentum pseudotensor
General relativity includes a dynamical spacetime, so it is difficult to see how to identify the conserved energy and momentum. Noether’s theorem allows these quantities to be determined from a Lagrangian with translation invariance, but general covariance makes translation invariance into something of a gauge symmetry. The energy and momentum derived within general relativity by Noether’s presecriptions do not make a real tensor for this reason.
Einstein argued that this is true for fundamental reasons, because the gravitational field could be made to vanish by a choice of coordinates. He maintained that the non-covariant energy momentum pseudotensor was in fact the best description of the energy momentum distribution in a gravitational field. This approach has been echoed by Lev Landau and Evgeny Lifshitz, and others, and has become standard.
The use of non-covariant objects like pseudotensors was heavily criticized in 1917 by Erwin Schrödinger and others.
Unified field theory
Following his research on general relativity, Einstein entered into a series of attempts to generalize his geometric theory of gravitation, which would allow the explanation of electromagnetism. In 1950, he described his "unified field theory" in a Scientific American article entitled "On the Generalized Theory of Gravitation." Although he continued to be lauded for his work, Einstein became increasingly isolated in his research, and his efforts were ultimately unsuccessful. In his pursuit of a unification of the fundamental forces, Einstein ignored some mainstream developments in physics, most notably the strong and weak nuclear forces, which were not well understood until many years after his death. Mainstream physics, in turn, largely ignored Einstein’s approaches to unification. Einstein’s dream of unifying other laws of physics with gravity motivates modern quests for a theory of everything and in particular string theory, where geometrical fields emerge in a unified quantum-mechanical setting.
Wormholes
Einstein collaborated with others to produce a model of a wormhole. His motivation was to model elementary particles with charge as a solution of gravitational field equations, in line with the program outlined in the paper "Do Gravitational Fields play an Important Role in the Constitution of the Elementary Particles?". These solutions cut and pasted Schwarzschild black holes to make a bridge between two patches.
If one end of a wormhole was positively charged, the other end would be negatively charged. These properties led Einstein to believe that pairs of particles and antiparticles could be described in this way.
Einstein–Cartan theory
In order to incorporate spinning point particles into general relativity, the affine connection needed to be generalized to include an antisymmetric part, called the torsion. This modification was made by Einstein and Cartan in the 1920s.
Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen paradox
In 1935, Einstein returned to the question of quantum mechanics. He considered how a measurement on one of two entangled particles would affect the other. He noted, along with his collaborators, that by performing different measurements on the distant particle, either of position or momentum, different properties of the entangled partner could be discovered without disturbing it in any way.
He then used a hypothesis of local realism to conclude that the other particle had these properties already determined. The principle he proposed is that if it is possible to determine what the answer to a position or momentum measurement would be, without in any way disturbing the particle, then the particle actually has values of position or momentum.
This principle distilled the essence of Einstein’s objection to quantum mechanics. As a physical principle, it has since been shown to be incompatible with experiments.
Equations of motion
The theory of general relativity has two fundamental laws – the Einstein equations which describe how space curves, and the geodesic equation which describes how particles move.
Since the equations of general relativity are non-linear, a lump of energy made out of pure gravitational fields, like a black hole, would move on a trajectory which is determined by the Einstein equations themselves, not by a new law. So Einstein proposed that the path of a singular solution, like a black hole, would be determined to be a geodesic from general relativity itself.
This was established by Einstein, Infeld and Hoffmann for pointlike objects without angular momentum, and by Roy Kerr for spinning objects.
Einstein’s mistakes
In addition to his well-accepted results, some of Einstein’s papers contain mistakes:
- 1905: In the original German version of the special relativity paper, and in some English translations, Einstein gives a wrong expression for the transverse mass of a fast moving particle. The transverse mass is the antiquated name for the ratio of the 3-force to the 3-acceleration when the force is perpendicular to the velocity. Einstein gives this ratio as , while the actual value is (corrected by Max Planck).
- 1905: In his PhD dissertation, the friction in dilute solutions has a miscalculated numerical prefactor, which makes the estimate of Avogadro’s number off by a factor of 3. The mistake is corrected by Einstein in a later publication.
- 1905: An expository paper explaining how airplanes fly includes an example which is incorrect. There is a wing which he claims will generate lift. This wing is flat on the bottom, and flat on the top, with a small bump at the center. It is designed to generate lift by Bernoulli’s principle, and Einstein claims that it will. Simple action reaction considerations, though, show that the wing will not generate lift, at least if it is long enough.
- 1911: Einstein predicted how much the sun’s gravity would deflect nearby starlight, but used an approximation which gives an answer which is half as big as the correct one.
- 1913: Einstein started writing papers based on his belief that the hole argument made general covariance impossible in a theory of gravity.
- 1922: Einstein published a qualitative theory of superconductivity based on the vague idea of electrons shared in orbits. This paper predated modern quantum mechanics, and is well understood to be completely wrong. The correct BCS theory of low temperature superconductivity was only worked out in 1957, thirty years after the establishing of modern quantum mechanics.
- 1937: Einstein believed that the focusing properties of geodesics in general relativity would lead to an instability which causes plane gravitational waves to collapse in on themselves. While this is true to a certain extent in some limits, because gravitational instabilities can lead to a concentration of energy density into black holes, for plane waves of the type Einstein and Rosen considered in their paper, the instabilities are under control. Einstein retracted this position a short time later, but until his death his collaborator Nathan Rosen maintained that gravitational waves are unstable.
- 1939: Einstein denied several times that black holes could form, the last time in print. He published a paper that argues that a star collapsing would spin faster and faster, spinning at the speed of light with infinite energy well before the point where it is about to collapse into a black hole. This paper received no citations, and the conclusions are well understood to be wrong. Einstein’s argument itself is inconclusive, since he only shows that stable spinning objects have to spin faster and faster to stay stable before the point where they collapse. But it is well understood today (and was understood well by some even then) that collapse cannot happen through stationary states the way Einstein imagined.
In addition to these well-established mistakes, there are other arguments whose deduction is considered correct, but whose interpretation or philosophical conclusion is considered to have been incorrect:
- In the Bohr–Einstein debates and the papers following this, Einstein tries to poke holes in the uncertainty principle, ingeniously, but unsuccessfully.
- In the EPR paper, Einstein concludes that quantum mechanics must be replaced by local hidden variables. The measured violations of Bell’s inequality show that hidden variables, if they exist, must be nonlocal.
Einstein himself considered the use of the "fudge factor" lambda in his 1917 paper founding cosmology as a "blunder". The theory of general relativity predicted an expanding or contracting universe, but Einstein wanted a universe which is an unchanging three dimensional sphere, like the surface of a three dimensional ball in four dimensions. He wanted this for philosophical reasons, so as to incorporate Mach’s principle in a reasonable way. He stabilized his solution by introducing a cosmological constant, and when the universe was shown to be expanding, he retracted the constant as a blunder. This is not really much of a blunder – the cosmological constant is necessary within general relativity as it is currently understood, and it is widely believed to have a nonzero value today. Einstein took the wrong side in a few scientific debates.
- He briefly flirted with transverse and longitudinal mass concepts, before rejecting them.
- Einstein initially opposed Minkowski’s geometrical formulation of special relativity, changing his mind completely a few years later.
- Based on his cosmological model, Einstein rejected expanding universe solutions by Friedman and Lemaitre as unphysical, changing his mind when the universe was shown to be expanding a few years later.
- Finding it too formal, Einstein believed that Heisenberg’s matrix mechanics was incorrect. He changed his mind when Schrödinger and others demonstrated that the formulation in terms of the Schrödinger equation, based on Einstein’s wave-particle duality was equivalent to Heisenberg’s matrices.
- Einstein rejected work on black holes by Chandrasekhar, Oppenheimer, and others, believing, along with Eddington, that collapse past the horizon (then called the ’Schwarzschild singularity’) would never happen. So big was his influence, that this opinion was not rejected until the early 1960s, almost a decade after his death.
- Einstein believed that some sort of nonlinear instability could lead to a field theory whose solutions would collapse into pointlike objects which would behave like quantum particles. While there are many field theories with point-like particle solutions, none of them behave like quantum particles. It is widely believed that quantum mechanics would be impossible to reproduce from a local field theory of the type Einstein considered, because of Bell’s inequality.
In addition to these well known mistakes, it is sometimes claimed that the general line of Einstein’s reasoning in the 1905 relativity paper is flawed, or the photon paper, or one or another of the most famous papers. None of these claims are widely accepted.
Collaboration with other scientists
In addition to long time collaborators Leopold Infeld, Nathan Rosen, Peter Bergmann and others, Einstein also had some one-shot collaborations with various scientists.
Einstein-de Haas experiment
Einstein and De Haas demonstrated that magnetization is due to the motion of electrons, nowadays known to be the spin. In order to show this, they reversed the magnetization in an iron bar suspended on a torsion pendulum. They confirmed that this leads the bar to rotate, because the electron’s angular momentum changes as the magnetization changes. This experiment needed to be sensitive, because the angular momentum associated with electrons is small, but it definitively established that electron motion of some kind is responsible for magnetization.
Schrödinger gas model
Einstein suggested to Erwin Schrödinger that he might be able to reproduce the statistics of a Bose–Einstein gas by considering a box. Then to each possible quantum motion of a particle in a box associate an independent harmonic oscillator. Quantizing these oscillators, each level will have an integer occupation number, which will be the number of particles in it.
This formulation is a form of second quantization, but it predates modern quantum mechanics. Erwin Schrödinger applied this to derive the thermodynamic properties of a semiclassical ideal gas. Schrödinger urged Einstein to add his name as co-author, although Einstein declined the invitation.
Einstein refrigerator
In 1926, Einstein and his former student Leó Szilárd co-invented (and in 1930, patented) the Einstein refrigerator. This Absorption refrigerator was then revolutionary for having no moving parts and using only heat as an input. On 11 November 1930, U.S. Patent 1,781,541 was awarded to Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd for the refrigerator. Their invention was not immediately put into commercial production, as the most promising of their patents were quickly bought up by the Swedish company Electrolux to protect its refrigeration technology from competition.
Einstein and Niels Bohr
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Bohr versus Einstein
In the 1920s, quantum mechanics developed into a more complete theory. Einstein was unhappy with the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory developed by Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. In this interpretation, quantum phenomena are inherently probabilistic, with definite states resulting only upon interaction with classical systems. A public debate between Einstein and Bohr followed, lasting on and off for many years (including during the Solvay Conferences). Einstein formulated thought experiments against the Copenhagen interpretation, which were all rebutted by Bohr. In a 1926 letter to Max Born, Einstein wrote: "I, at any rate, am convinced that He God] does not throw dice."
Einstein was never satisfied by what he perceived to be quantum theory’s intrinsically incomplete description of nature, and in 1935 he further explored the issue in collaboration with Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, noting that the theory seems to require non-local interactions; this is known as the EPR paradox. The EPR experiment has since been performed, with results confirming quantum theory’s predictions. Repercussions of the Einstein–Bohr debate have found their way into philosophical discourse.
Religious views
The question of scientific determinism gave rise to questions about Einstein’s position on theological determinism, and whether or not he believed in God, or in a god. In 1929, Einstein told Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein "I believe in Spinoza’s God, who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind." In a 1954 letter, he wrote, "I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly.” In a letter to philosopher Erik Gutkind, Einstein remarked, "The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish."
Einstein had previously explored this belief that man could not understand the nature of God when he gave an interview to Time Magazine explaining:
I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God.
—Albert Einstein
Political views
Albert Einstein, seen here with his wife Elsa Einstein and Zionist leaders, including future President of Israel Chaim Weizmann, his wife Dr. Vera Weizmann, Menahem Ussishkin, and Ben-Zion Mossinson on arrival in New York City in 1921.
Throughout the November Revolution in Germany Einstein signed an appeal for the foundation of a nationwide liberal and democratic party, which was published in the Berliner Tageblatt on 16 November 1918, and became a member of the German Democratic Party.
Einstein flouted the ascendant Nazi movement, tried to be a voice of moderation in the tumultuous formation of the State of Israel and braved anti-communist politics and resistance to the civil rights movement in the United States. He participated in the 1927 congress of the League against Imperialism in Brussels. He was a socialist Zionist who supported the creation of a Jewish national homeland in the British mandate of Palestine.
After World War II, as enmity between the former allies became a serious issue, Einstein wrote, “I do not know how the third World War will be fought, but I can tell you what they will use in the Fourth – rocks!” In a 1949 Monthly Review article entitled “Why Socialism?” Albert Einstein described a chaotic capitalist society, a source of evil to be overcome, as the “predatory phase of human development” (Einstein 1949). With Albert Schweitzer and Bertrand Russell, Einstein lobbied to stop nuclear testing and future bombs. Days before his death, Einstein signed the Russell–Einstein Manifesto, which led to the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs.
Einstein was a member of several civil rights groups, including the Princeton chapter of the NAACP. When the aged W. E. B. Du Bois was accused of being a Communist spy, Einstein volunteered as a character witness, and the case was dismissed shortly afterward. Einstein’s friendship with activist Paul Robeson, with whom he served as co-chair of the American Crusade to End Lynching, lasted twenty years.
Einstein said "Politics is for the moment, equation for the eternity", stating that physics was more important in his life. He declined the presidency of Israel in 1952.
Non-scientific legacy
While travelling, Einstein wrote daily to his wife Elsa and adopted stepdaughters Margot and Ilse. The letters were included in the papers bequeathed to The Hebrew University. Margot Einstein permitted the personal letters to be made available to the public, but requested that it not be done until twenty years after her death (she died in 1986). Barbara Wolff, of The Hebrew University’s Albert Einstein Archives, told the BBC that there are about 3,500 pages of private correspondence written between 1912 and 1955.
Einstein bequeathed the royalties from use of his image to The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Corbis, successor to The Roger Richman Agency, licenses the use of his name and associated imagery, as agent for the university.
In popular culture
Main article: Albert Einstein in popular culture
In the period before World War II, Albert Einstein was so well-known in America that he would be stopped on the street by people wanting him to explain "that theory." He finally figured out a way to handle the incessant inquiries. He told his inquirers "Pardon me, sorry! Always I am mistaken for Professor Einstein."
Albert Einstein has been the subject of or inspiration for many novels, films, and plays. Einstein is a favorite model for depictions of mad scientists and absent-minded professors; his expressive face and distinctive hairstyle have been widely copied and exaggerated. Time magazine’s Frederic Golden wrote that Einstein was "a cartoonist’s dream come true."
Einstein’s association with great intelligence and originality has made the name Einstein synonymous with genius.
Awards
Max Planck presents Albert Einstein with the Max Planck medal of the German Physical Society, 28 June 1929, in Berlin, Germany
In 1922, Einstein was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics, "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect". This refers to his 1905 paper on the photoelectric effect, "On a Heuristic Viewpoint Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light", which was well supported by the experimental evidence by that time. The presentation speech began by mentioning "his theory of relativity which had] been the subject of lively debate in philosophical circles and] also has astrophysical implications which are being rigorously examined at the present time." (Einstein 1923)
It was long reported that Einstein gave the Nobel prize money directly to his first wife, Mileva Marić, in compliance with their 1919 divorce settlement. However, personal correspondence made public in 2006 shows that he invested much of it in the United States, and saw much of it wiped out in the Great Depression.
Einstein traveled to New York City in the United States for the first time on 2 April 1921. When asked where he got his scientific ideas, Einstein explained that he believed scientific work best proceeds from an examination of physical reality and a search for underlying axioms, with consistent explanations that apply in all instances and avoid contradicting each other. He also recommended theories with visualizable results (Einstein 1954).
In 1999, Albert Einstein was named Person of the Century by Time magazine.
Honors
- Albert Einstein has been recognized numerous times for his achievements. The International Union of Pure and Applied Physics named 2005 the “World Year of Physics” in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the publication of the Annus Mirabilis Papers.
- The Albert Einstein Memorial in central Washington, D.C. is a monumental bronze statue depicting Einstein seated with manuscript papers in hand. The statue commissioned in 1979, is located in a grove of trees at the southwest corner of the grounds of the National Academy of Sciences on Constitution Avenue.
- The chemical element 99, einsteinium, was named for him in August 1955, four months after Einstein’s death.
- In 1999 Time magazine named him the Person of the Century, beating contenders like Mahatma Gandhi and Franklin Roosevelt, and in the words of a biographer, “to the scientifically literate and the public at large, Einstein is synonymous with genius.” Also in 1999, an opinion poll of 100 of today's leading physicists ranked Einstein the "greatest physicist ever". A Gallup poll recorded him as the fourth most admired person of the 20th century in the U.S.
- The Albert Einstein Award (sometimes called the Albert Einstein Medal because it is accompanied with a gold medal) is an award in theoretical physics, that was established to recognize high achievement in the natural sciences. It was endowed by the Lewis and Rosa Strauss Memorial Fund in honor of Albert Einstein’s 70th birthday. It was first awarded in 1951 and included a prize money of $ 15,000, which was later reduced to $ 5,000. The winner is selected by a committee (the first of which consisted of Einstein, Oppenheimer, von Neumann and Weyl) of the Institute for Advanced Study, which administers the award.116] Lewis L. Strauss used to be one of the trustees of the institute.
- The Albert Einstein Peace Prize is an award that is given yearly by the Chicago, Illinois-based Albert Einstein Peace Prize Foundation. Winners of the prize receive $50,000.
- In 1990, his name was added to the Walhalla temple for "laudable and distinguished Germans", which is located east of Regensburg, in Bavaria, Germany.
Rabindranath Tagore
| Rabindranath Tagore | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 7 May 1861(1861-05-07) Kolkata, India |
| Died | 7 August 1941 (aged 80) Kolkata, India |
| Occupation | poet, novelist, short-story writer, essayist, playwright, thespian, educationist, spiritualist, philosopher, internationalist, cultural relativist, orator, composer,song-writer, singer, artist |
| Period | Bengal Renaissance |
| Notable award(s) | Nobel Prize in Literature (1913) |
| Signature |  |
Rabindranath Tagore (Bengali: রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর) (7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941), sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath. As a poet, novelist, musician, and playwright, he reshaped Bengali literature and music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", in 1913 being the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, Tagore was perhaps the most important literary figure of Bengali literature. He was a mesmerising representative of the Indian culture whose influence and popularity internationally perhaps could only be compared to that of Gandhi, whom Tagore named 'Mahatma' out of his deep admiration for him.
A Pirali Brahmin from Kolkata, Tagore was already writing poems at age eight. At age sixteen, he published his first substantial poetry under the pseudonym Bhanushingho ("Sun Lion") and wrote his first short stories and dramas in 1877. Tagore denounced the British Raj and supported independence. His efforts endure in his vast canon and in the institution he founded, Visva-Bharati University.
Tagore modernised Bengali art by spurning rigid classical forms. His novels, stories, songs, dance-dramas, and essays spoke to political and personal topics. Gitanjali (Song Offerings), Gora (Fair-Faced), and Ghare-Baire (The Home and the World) are his best-known works, and his verse, short stories, and novels were acclaimed for their lyricism, colloquialism, naturalism, and contemplation. Tagore was perhaps the only litterateur who penned anthems of two countries: Bangladesh and India: Amar Shonar Bangla and Jana Gana Mana.
Early life (1861–1901)
The youngest of thirteen surviving children, Tagore was born in the Jorasanko mansion in Kolkata of parents Debendranath Tagore (1817–1905) and Sarada Devi (1830–1875). Tagore family patriarchs were the Brahmo founding fathers of the Adi Dharm faith. He was mostly raised by servants, as his mother had died in his early childhood; his father travelled extensively, Tagore largely declined classroom schooling, preferring to roam the mansion or nearby idylls: Bolpur, Panihati, and others. Upon his upanayan initiation at age eleven, Tagore left Kolkata on 14 February 1873 to tour India with his father for several months. They visited his father's Santiniketan estate and stopped in Amritsar before reaching the Himalayan hill station of Dalhousie. There, young "Rabi" read biographies and was home-educated in history, astronomy, modern science, and Sanskrit, and examined the poetry of Kālidāsa. He completed major works in 1877, one a long poem of the Maithili style pioneered by Vidyapati. Published pseudonymously, experts accepted them as the lost works of Bhānusiṃha, a newly discovered 17th-century Vaiṣṇava poet. He wrote "Bhikharini" (1877; "The Beggar Woman"—the Bengali language's first short story) and Sandhya Sangit (1882)—including the famous poem "Nirjharer Swapnabhanga" ("The Rousing of the Waterfall").
A prospective barrister, Tagore enrolled at a public school in Brighton, East Sussex, England in 1878. He read law at University College London, but left school to explore Shakespeare and more: Religio Medici, Coriolanus, and Antony and Cleopatra; he returned degreeless to Bengal in 1880. On 9 December 1883 he married Mrinalini Devi (born Bhabatarini, 1873–1900); they had five children, two of whom died before reaching adulthood. In 1890, Tagore began managing his family's vast estates in Shilaidaha, a region now in Bangladesh; he was joined by his wife and children in 1898. In 1890, Tagore released his Manasi poems, among his best-known work. As "Zamindar Babu", Tagore crisscrossed the holdings while living out of the family's luxurious barge, the Padma, to collect (mostly token) rents and bless villagers, who held feasts in his honour. These years—1891–1895: Tagore's Sadhana period, after one of Tagore’s magazines—were his most fecund. During this period, more than half the stories of the three-volume and eighty-four-story Galpaguchchha were written.With irony and gravity, they depicted a wide range of Bengali lifestyles, particularly village life.
Santiniketan (1901–1932)
In 1901, Tagore left Shilaidaha and moved to Santiniketan to found an ashram which grew to include a marble-floored prayer hall ("The Mandir"), an experimental school, groves of trees, gardens, and a library.There, Tagore's wife and two of his children died. His father died on 19 January 1905. He received monthly payments as part of his inheritance and additional income from the Maharaja of Tripura, sales of his family's jewellery, his seaside bungalow in Puri, and mediocre royalties (Rs. 2,000) from his works.By now, his work was gaining him a large following among Bengali and foreign readers alike, and he published such works as Naivedya (1901) and Kheya (1906) while translating his poems into free verse. On 14 November 1913, Tagore learned that he had won the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming the first Asian Nobel laureate. The Swedish Academy appreciated the idealistic and—for Western readers—accessible nature of a small body of his translated material, including the 1912 Gitanjali: Song Offerings. In 1915, Tagore was knighted by the British Crown. He later returned his knighthood in protest of the massacre of unarmed Indians in 1919 at Jallianwala Bagh.
In 1921, Tagore and agricultural economist Leonard Elmhirst set up the Institute for Rural Reconstruction, later renamed Shriniketan—"Abode of Peace"—in Surul, a village near the ashram at Santiniketan. Through it, Tagore bypassed Gandhi's symbolic Swaraj protests, which he despised.He sought aid from donors, officials, and scholars worldwide to "free village[s] from the shackles of helplessness and ignorance" by "vitalis[ing] knowledge". In the early 1930s, he targeted India's "abnormal caste consciousness" and untouchability. Lecturing against these, he penned untouchable heroes for his poems and dramas and campaigned—successfully—to open Guruvayoor Temple to Dalits.
Twilight years (1932–1941)
To the end, Tagore scrutinized orthodoxy. He upbraided Gandhi for declaring that a massive 15 January 1934 earthquake in Bihar—leaving thousands dead—was divine retribution brought on by the oppression of Dalits. He mourned the endemic poverty of Kolkata and the accelerating socioeconomic decline of Bengal, which he detailed in an unrhymed hundred-line poem whose technique of searing double-vision would foreshadow Satyajit Ray's film Apur Sansar. Fifteen new volumes of Tagore writings appeared, among them the prose-poems works Punashcha (1932), Shes Saptak (1935), and Patraput (1936). Experimentation continued: he developed prose-songs and dance-dramas, including Chitrangada (1914),Shyama (1939), and Chandalika (1938), and wrote the novels Dui Bon (1933), Malancha (1934), and Char Adhyay (1934). Tagore took an interest in science in his last years, writing Visva-Parichay (a collection of essays) in 1937. His exploration of biology, physics, and astronomy impacted his poetry, which often contained extensive naturalism that underscored his respect for scientific laws. He also wove the process of science, including narratives of scientists, into many stories contained in such volumes as Se (1937), Tin Sangi (1940), and Galpasalpa (1941).
Tagore's last four years were marked by chronic pain and two long periods of illness. These began when Tagore lost consciousness in late 1937; he remained comatose and near death for an extended period. This was followed three years later, in late 1940, by a similar spell, from which he never recovered. The poetry Tagore wrote in these years is among his finest, and is distinctive for its preoccupation with death.After extended suffering, Tagore died on 7 August 1941 (22 Shravan 1348) in an upstairs room of the Jorasanko mansion in which he was raised; his death anniversary is mourned across the Bengali-speaking world.
Travel
Between 1878 and 1932, Tagore visited more than thirty countries on five continents; many of these trips were crucial in familiarising non-Indian audiences with his works and spreading his political ideas. In 1912, he took a sheaf of his translated works to England, where they impressed missionary and Gandhi protégé Charles F. Andrews, Anglo-Irish poet William Butler Yeats, Ezra Pound, Robert Bridges, Ernest Rhys, Thomas Sturge Moore, and others. Indeed, Yeats wrote the preface to the English translation of Gitanjali, while Andrews joined Tagore at Santiniketan. On 10 November 1912, Tagore began touring the United States and the United Kingdom, staying in Butterton, Staffordshire with Andrews's clergymen friends. From 3 May 1916 until April 1917, Tagore went on lecturing circuits in Japan and the United States and denounced nationalism. His essay "Nationalism in India" was scorned and praised, this latter by pacifists, including Romain Rolland.
Shortly after returning to India, the 63-year-old Tagore accepted the Peruvian government's invitation to visit. He then travelled to Mexico. Each government pledged US$100,000 to the school at Shantiniketan (Visva-Bharati) in commemoration of his visits. A week after his 6 November 1924 arrival in Buenos Aires, Argentina, an ill Tagore moved into the Villa Miralrío at the behest of Victoria Ocampo. He left for India in January 1925. On 30 May 1926, Tagore reached Naples, Italy; he met Benito Mussolini in Rome the next day.A warm rapport ended when Tagore criticised Mussolini on 20 July 1926.
On 14 July 1927, Tagore and two companions began a four-month tour of Southeast Asia, visiting Bali, Java, Kuala Lumpur, Malacca, Penang, Siam, and Singapore. Tagore's travelogues from the tour were collected into the work "Jatri". In early 1930 he left Bengal for a nearly year-long tour of Europe and the United States. Once he returned to the UK, while his paintings were being exhibited in Paris and London, he stayed at a Friends settlement in Birmingham. There he wrote his Oxford Hibbert Lectures and spoke at London's annual Quaker gathering. There (addressing relations between the British and Indians, a topic he would grapple with over the next two years), Tagore spoke of a "dark chasm of aloofness". He visited Aga Khan III, stayed at Dartington Hall, and toured Denmark, Switzerland, and Germany from June to mid-September 1930, then the Soviet Union.Lastly, in April 1932, Tagore—who was acquainted with the legends and works of the Persian mystic Hafez—was hosted by Reza Shah Pahlavi of Iran.[58][59] Such extensive travels allowed Tagore to interact with many notable contemporaries, including Henri Bergson, Albert Einstein, Robert Frost, Thomas Mann, George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells and Romain Rolland. Tagore's last travels abroad, including visits to Persia and Iraq (in 1932) and Ceylon (in 1933), only sharpened his opinions regarding human divisions and nationalism.
Works
Though known mostly for his poetry, Tagore also wrote novels, essays, short stories, travelogues, dramas, and thousands of songs. Of Tagore's prose, his short stories are perhaps most highly regarded; indeed, he is credited with originating the Bengali-language version of the genre. His works are frequently noted for their rhythmic, optimistic, and lyrical nature. Such stories mostly borrow from deceptively simple subject matter: common people.
Novels and non-fiction
Tagore wrote eight novels and four novellas, among them Chaturanga, Shesher Kobita, Char Odhay, and Noukadubi. Ghare Baire (The Home and the World)—through the lens of the idealistic zamindar protagonist Nikhil—excoriates rising Indian nationalism, terrorism, and religious zeal in the Swadeshi movement; a frank expression of Tagore's conflicted sentiments, it emerged out of a 1914 bout of depression. The novel ends in Hindu-Muslim violence and Nikhil's (likely mortal) wounding. Gora raises controversial questions regarding the Indian identity. As with Ghore Baire, matters of self-identity , personal freedom, and religion are developed in the context of a family story and love triangle.n Jogajog (Relationships), the heroine Kumudini—bound by the ideals of Śiva-Sati, exemplified by Dākshāyani—is torn between her pity for the sinking fortunes of her progressive and compassionate elder brother and his foil: her exploitative, rakish, and patriarchical husband. In it, Tagore demonstrates his feminist leanings, using pathos to depict the plight and ultimate demise of Bengali women trapped by pregnancy, duty, and family honour; simultaneously, he treats the decline of Bengal's landed oligarchy.
Others were uplifting: Shesher Kobita (translated twice as Last Poem and Farewell Song) is his most lyrical novel, with poems and rhythmic passages written by the main character, a poet. It also contains elements of satire and postmodernism; stock characters gleefully attack the reputation of an old, outmoded, oppressively renowned poet who, incidentally, goes by the name of Rabindranath Tagore. Though his novels remain among the least-appreciated of his works, they have been given renewed attention via film adaptations by Satyajit Ray and others: Chokher Bali and Ghare Baire are exemplary. Their soundtracks often feature rabindrasŋgit. Tagore wrote many non-fiction books, writing on topics ranging from Indian history to linguistics. Aside from autobiographical works, his travelogues, essays, and lectures were compiled into several volumes, including Europe Jatrir Patro (Letters from Europe) and Manusher Dhormo (The Religion of Man).
Music and art
For Bengalis, their appeal, stemming from the combination of emotive strength and beauty described as surpassing even Tagore's poetry, was such that the Modern Review observed that "[t]here is in Bengal no cultured home where Rabindranath's songs are not sung or at least attempted to be sung ... Even illiterate villagers sing his songs". Arthur Strangways of The Observer introduced non-Bengalis to rabindrasangeet in The Music of Hindostan, calling it a "vehicle of a personality ... [that] go behind this or that system of music to that beauty of sound which all systems put out their hands to seize." Among them are Bangladesh's national anthem Amar Shonar Bangla (আমার সোনার বাঙলা) and India's national anthem Jana Gana Mana (জন গণ মন), making Tagore unique in having scored two national anthems. He influenced the styles of such musicians as sitar maestro Vilayat Khan, and the sarodiyas Buddhadev Dasgupta and Amjad Ali Khan. A free and non-profit radio station named Radio Tagore dedicated solely to Rabindranath Tagore was created to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the great man's birth.
At age sixty, Tagore took up drawing and painting; successful exhibitions of his many works—which made a debut appearance in Paris upon encouragement by artists he met in the south of France—were held throughout Europe. Tagore—who likely exhibited protanopia ("color blindness"), or partial lack of (red-green, in Tagore's case) colour discernment—painted in a style characterised by peculiarities in aesthetics and colouring schemes. Tagore emulated numerous styles, including craftwork from northern New Ireland, Haida carvings from the west coast of Canada (British Columbia), and woodcuts by Max Pechstein. Tagore also had an artist's eye for his own handwriting, embellishing the scribbles, cross-outs, and word layouts in his manuscripts with simple artistic leitmotifs, including simple rhythmic designs.
Theatre
At age sixteen, Tagore led his brother Jyotirindranath's adaptation of Molière's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. At age twenty, he wrote his first drama-opera—Valmiki Pratibha (The Genius of Valmiki)—which describes how the bandit Valmiki reforms his ethos, is blessed by Saraswati, and composes the Rāmāyana. Through it, Tagore vigorously explores a wide range of dramatic styles and emotions, including usage of revamped kirtans and adaptation of traditional English and Irish folk melodies as drinking songs. Another notable play, Dak Ghar (The Post Office), describes how a child—striving to escape his stuffy confines—ultimately "fall[s] asleep" (which suggests his physical death). A story with worldwide appeal (it received rave reviews in Europe), Dak Ghar dealt with death as, in Tagore's words, "spiritual freedom" from "the world of hoarded wealth and certified creeds". During World War II, Polish doctor and educator Janusz Korczak selected "The Post Office" as the play the orphans in his care in the Warsaw Ghetto would perform. This occurred on 18 July 1942, less than three weeks before they were to be deported to the Treblinka extermination camp. According to his main English-language biographer, Betty Jean Lifton, in her book The King of Children, Dr. Korszak thought a great deal about whether one should be able to determine when and how to die. He may have been trying to find a way for the children in his orphanage to accept death.
His other works—emphasizing fusion of lyrical flow and emotional rhythm tightly focused on a core idea—were unlike previous Bengali dramas. His works sought to articulate, in Tagore's words, "the play of feeling and not of action". In 1890 he wrote Visarjan (Sacrifice), regarded as his finest drama. The Bengali-language originals included intricate subplots and extended monologues. Later, his dramas probed more philosophical and allegorical themes; these included Dak Ghar. Another is Tagore's Chandalika (Untouchable Girl), which was modeled on an ancient Buddhist legend describing how Ananda—the Gautama Buddha's disciple—asks water of an Adivasi ("untouchable") girl Lastly, among his most famous dramas is Raktakaravi (Red Oleanders), which tells of a kleptocratic king who enriches himself by forcing his subjects to mine. The heroine, Nandini, eventually rallies the common people to destroy these symbols of subjugation. Tagore's other plays include Chitrangada, Raja, and Mayar Khela. Dance dramas based on Tagore's plays are commonly referred to as rabindra nritya natyas.
Stories
The "Sadhana" period, 1891–1895, was among Tagore's most fecund, yielding more than half the stories contained in the three-volume Galpaguchchha, itself a group of eighty-four stories. They reflect upon Tagore's surroundings, on modern and fashionable ideas, and on mind puzzles. Tagore associated his earliest stories, such as those of the "Sadhana" period, with an exuberance of vitality and spontaneity; these traits were cultivated by zamindar Tagore’s life in villages such as Patisar, Shajadpur, and Shilaida. Seeing the common and the poor, he examined their lives with a depth and feeling singular in Indian literature up to that point.
In "The Fruitseller from Kabul", Tagore speaks in first person as a town-dweller and novelist who chances upon the Afghani seller. He channels the longing of those trapped in mundane, hardscrabble Indian urban life, giving play to dreams of a different existence in the distant and wild mountains: "There were autumn mornings, the time of year when kings of old went forth to conquest; and I, never stirring from my little corner in Kolkata, would let my mind wander over the whole world. At the very name of another country, my heart would go out to it ... I would fall to weaving a network of dreams: the mountains, the glens, the forest .... ". Many of the other Galpaguchchha stories were written in Tagore’s Sabuj Patra period (1914–1917; also named for one of Tagore's magazines).
Tagore's Golpoguchchho (Bunch of Stories) remains among Bengali literature's most popular fictional works, providing subject matter for many successful films and theatrical plays. Satyajit Ray's film Charulata was based upon Tagore's controversial novella, Nastanirh (The Broken Nest). In Atithi (also made into a film), the young Brahmin boy Tarapada shares a boat ride with a village zamindar. The boy reveals that he has run away from home, only to wander around ever since. Taking pity, the zamindar adopts him and ultimately arranges his marriage to the zamindar's own daughter. However, the night before the wedding, Tarapada runs off—again. Strir Patra (The Letter from the Wife) is among Bengali literature's earliest depictions of the bold emancipation of women. The heroine Mrinal, the wife of a typical patriarchical Bengali middle class man, writes a letter while she is travelling (which constitutes the whole story). It details the pettiness of her life and struggles; she finally declares that she will not return to her husband's home with the statement Amio bachbo. Ei bachlum: "And I shall live. Here, I live".
Haimanti assails Hindu marriage and the dismal lifelessness of married Bengali women, hypocrisies plaguing the Indian middle classes, and how Haimanti, a sensitive young woman, must—due to her sensitiveness and free spirit—sacrifice her life. In the last passage, Tagore directly attacks the Hindu custom of glorifying Sita's attempted self-immolation as a means of appeasing her husband Rama's doubts. Musalmani Didi examines Hindu-Muslim tensions and, in many ways, embodies the essence of Tagore's humanism. Darpaharan exhibits Tagore's self-consciousness, describing a fey young man harboring literary ambitions. Though he loves his wife, he wishes to stifle her own literary career, deeming it unfeminine. Tagore himself, in his youth, seems to have harbored similar ideas about women. Darpaharan depicts the final humbling of the man as he acknowledges his wife's talents. As do many other Tagore stories, Jibito o Mrito equips Bengalis with a ubiquitous epigram: Kadombini moriya proman korilo she more nai—"Kadombini died, thereby proving that she hadn't".
Poetry
Tagore's poetry—which varied in style from classical formalism to the comic, visionary, and ecstatic—proceeds from a lineage established by 15th- and 16th-century Vaishnava poets. Tagore was awed by the mysticism of the rishi-authors who—including Vyasa—wrote the Upanishads, the Bhakti-Sufi mystic Kabir, and Ramprasad Sen. Yet Tagore's poetry became most innovative and mature after his exposure to rural Bengal's folk music, which included Baul ballads—especially those of bard Lalon. These—rediscovered and popularised by Tagore—resemble 19th-century Kartābhajā hymns that emphasize inward divinity and rebellion against religious and social orthodoxy.During his Shilaidaha years, his poems took on a lyrical quality, speaking via the maner manus (the Bāuls' "man within the heart") or meditating upon the jivan devata ("living God within"). This figure thus sought connection with divinity through appeal to nature and the emotional interplay of human drama. Tagore used such techniques in his Bhānusiṃha poems (which chronicle the romance between Radha and Krishna), which he repeatedly revised over the course of seventy years.
Tagore responded to the mostly crude emergence of modernism and realism in Bengali literature by writing experimental works in the 1930s. Examples works include Africa and Camalia, which are among the better known of his latter poems. He occasionally wrote poems using Shadhu Bhasha (a Sanskritised dialect of Bengali); later, he began using Cholti Bhasha (a more popular dialect). Other notable works include Manasi, Sonar Tori (Golden Boat), Balaka (Wild Geese—the title being a metaphor for migrating souls), and Purobi. Sonar Tori's most famous poem—dealing with the ephemeral nature of life and achievement—goes by the same name; hauntingly it ends: "শূন্য নদীর তীরে রহিনু পড়ি / যাহা ছিল লয়ে গেল সোনার তরী" ("Shunno nodir tire rohinu poŗi / Jaha chhilo loe gêlo shonar tori"—"all I had achieved was carried off on the golden boat—only I was left behind."). Internationally, Gitanjali (গীতাঞ্জলি) is Tagore's best-known collection, winning him his Nobel Prize. Song VII (গীতাঞ্জলি 127) of Gitanjali:
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Free-verse translation by Tagore (Gitanjali, verse VII):
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"Klanti" (Bengali: ক্লান্তি; "Fatigue"), the sixth poem in Gitanjali:
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Tagore's poetry has been set to music by various composers, among them classical composer Arthur Shepherd's triptych for soprano and string quartet, as well as composer Garry Schyman's "Praan", an adaptation of Tagore's poem "Stream of Life" from Gitanjali. The latter was composed and recorded with vocals by Palbasha Siddique to accompany Internet celebrity Matt Harding's 2008 viral video. In 1917 his words were translated adeptly and set to music by Richard Hageman (an Anglo- Dutch composer) to produce what is regarded as one of the finest art songs in the English language: Do not go my love (Ed.Schirmer NY 1917).
Political views
Tagore's political thought was complex. He opposed imperialism and supported Indian nationalists. His views have their first poetic release in Manast, mostly composed in his twenties. Evidence produced during the Hindu-German Conspiracy trial and later accounts affirm his awareness of the Ghadarite conspiracy, and stated that he sought the support of Japanese Prime Minister Terauchi Masatake and former Premier Ōkuma Shigenobu. Yet he lampooned the Swadeshi movement, denouncing it in "The Cult of the Charka", an acrid 1925 essay. He emphasized self-help and intellectual uplift of the masses as an alternative, stating that British imperialism was a "political symptom of our social disease", urging Indians to accept that "there can be no question of blind revolution, but of steady and purposeful education".
Such views enraged many. He narrowly escaped assassination by Indian expatriates during his stay in a San Francisco hotel in late 1916. The plot failed only because the would-be assassins fell into argument. Yet Tagore wrote songs lionizing the Indian independence movement and renounced his knighthood in protest against the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh Massacre. Two of Tagore's more politically charged compositions, "Chitto Jetha Bhayshunyo" ("Where the Mind is Without Fear") and "Ekla Chalo Re" ("If They Answer Not to Thy Call, Walk Alone"), gained mass appeal, with the latter favoured by Gandhi. Despite his tumultuous relations with Gandhi, Tagore was key in resolving a Gandhi-Ambedkar dispute involving separate electorates for untouchables, ending Gandhi's fast "unto death".
Tagore lampooned rote schooling: in "The Parrot's Training", a bird is caged and force-fed pages torn from books until it dies. These views led Tagore, while visiting Santa Barbara on 11 October 1917, to conceive of a new type of university, desiring to "make Santiniketan the connecting thread between India and the world [and] a world center for the study of humanity somewhere beyond the limits of nation and geography." The school, which he named Visva-Bharati had its foundation stone laid on 22 December 1918; it was later inaugurated on 22 December 1921.[Here, Tagore implemented a brahmacharya pedagogical structure employing gurus to provide individualised guidance for pupils. Tagore worked hard to fundraise for and staff the school, even contributing all of his Nobel Prize monies. Tagore’s duties as steward and mentor at Santiniketan kept him busy; he taught classes in mornings and wrote the students' textbooks in afternoons and evenings. Tagore also fundraised extensively for the school in Europe and the U.S. between 1919 and 1921.
Impact
Tagore was famed throughout much of Europe, North America, and East Asia. He co-founded Dartington Hall School, a progressive coeducational institution; in Japan, he influenced such figures as Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata Tagore's works were widely translated into English, Dutch, German, Spanish, and other European languages by Czech indologist Vincenc Lesný, French Nobel laureate André Gide, Russian poet Anna Akhmatova,former Turkish Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit, and others. In the United States, Tagore's lecturing circuits, particularly those in 1916–1917, were widely attended and acclaimed. Yet, several controversies involving Tagore resulted in a decline in his popularity in Japan and North America after the late 1920s, concluding with his "near total eclipse" outside of Bengal.
Via translations, Tagore influenced Spanish literature: Chileans Pablo Neruda and Gabriela Mistral, Mexican writer Octavio Paz, and Spaniards José Ortega y Gasset, Zenobia Camprubí, and Juan Ramón Jiménez. Between 1914 and 1922, the Jiménez-Camprubí spouses translated twenty-two of Tagore's books from English into Spanish and extensively revised and adapted such works as Tagore's The Crescent Moon. In this time, Jiménez developed "naked poetry" (Spanish: «poesia desnuda»), a landmark innovation. Ortega y Gasset wrote that "Tagore's wide appeal [may stem from the fact that] he speaks of longings for perfection that we all have ... Tagore awakens a dormant sense of childish wonder, and he saturates the air with all kinds of enchanting promises for the reader, who ... pays little attention to the deeper import of Oriental mysticism". Tagore's works circulated in free editions around 1920 alongside those of Dante Alighieri, Miguel de Cervantes, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Plato, and Leo Tolstoy.
Tagore was deemed overrated by some Westerners. Graham Greene doubted that "anyone but Mr. Yeats can still take his poems very seriously." Modern remnants of a past Latin American reverence of Tagore were discovered, for example, by an astonished Salman Rushdie during a trip to Nicaragua.
Corpus
- — Bengali —
| Poetry | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| * মানসী | Manasi | (The Ideal One) | 1890 |
| * সোনার তরী | Sonar Tari | (The Golden Boat) | 1894 |
| * গীতাঞ্জলি | Gitanjali | (Song Offerings) | 1910 |
| * গীতিমাল্য | Gitimalya | (Wreath of Songs) | 1914 |
| * বলাকা | Balaka | (The Flight of Cranes) | 1916 |
| Dramas | |||
| * বাল্মিকী প্রতিভা | Valmiki Pratibha | (The Genius of Valmiki) | 1881 |
| * বিসর্জন | Visarjan | (The Sacrifice) | 1890 |
| * রাজা | Raja | (The King of the Dark Chamber) | 1910 |
| * ডাকঘর | Dak Ghar | (The Post Office) | 1912 |
| * অচলায়তন | Achalayatan | (The Immovable) | 1912 |
| * মুক্তধারা | Muktadhara | (The Waterfall) | 1922 |
| * রক্তকরবী | Raktakaravi | (Red Oleanders) | 1926 |
| Fiction | |||
| * নষ্টনীড় | Nastanirh | (The Broken Nest) | 1901 |
| * গোরা | Gora | (Fair-Faced) | 1910 |
| * ঘরে বাইরে | Ghare Baire | (The Home and the World) | 1916 |
| * যোগাযোগ | Yogayog | (Crosscurrents) | 1929 |
| Memoirs | |||
| * জীবনস্মৃতি | Jivansmriti | (My Reminiscences) | 1912 |
| * ছেলেবেলা | Chhelebela | (My Boyhood Days) | 1940 |
Jagadish Chandra Bose
জগদীশ চন্দ্র বসু
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Jagadish Chandra Bose in Royal Institution, London | |
Born | 30 November 1858(1858-11-30) |
Died | 23 November 1937 (aged 78) |
Residence | India |
Nationality | Indian |
Fields | Physics, Biophysics, Biology, Botany, Archaeology, Bengali Literature, Bangla Science Fiction |
Institutions | |
Notable students | |
Known for | |
Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose CSI CIE FRS (Bengali: জগদীশ চন্দ্র বসু Jôgodish Chôndro Boshu) (November 30, 1858 – November 23, 1937) born in a Bengali Hindu Kayasth family was a polymath: a physicist, biologist, botanist, archaeologist, and writer of science fiction. He pioneered the investigation of radio and microwave optics, made very significant contributions to plant science, and laid the foundations of experimental science in the Indian subcontinent. He is considered one of the fathers of radio science,[3] and is also considered the father of Bengali science fiction. He was the first person from the Indian subcontinent to get a US patent, in 1904.
Born during the British Raj, Bose graduated from St. Xavier's College, Calcutta. He then went to the University of London to study medicine, but could not complete his studies due to health problems. He returned to India and joined the Presidency College of University of Calcutta as a Professor of Physics. There, despite racial discrimination and a lack of funding and equipment, Bose carried on his scientific research. He made remarkable progress in his research of remote wireless signaling and was the first to use semiconductor junctions to detect radio signals. However, instead of trying to gain commercial benefit from this invention Bose made his inventions public in order to allow others to develop on his research. Subsequently, he made some pioneering discoveries in plant physiology. He used his own invention, the crescograph, to measure plant response to various stimuli, and thereby scientifically proved parallelism between animal and plant tissues. Although Bose filed for a patent for one of his inventions due to peer pressure, his reluctance to any form of patenting was well known. He is being recognised for many of his contributions to modern science.
Early life and education
Bose was born in Munshiganj District in Bengal (now in Bangladesh) on November 30, 1858. His father, Bhagawan Chandra Bose, was a Brahmo and leader of the Brahmo Samaj and worked as a deputy magistrate/ assistant commissioner in Faridpur, Bardhaman and other places. His family hailed from the village Rarikhal, Bikrampur, in the current day Munshiganj District of Bangladesh. Bose’s education started in a vernacular school, because his father believed that one must know one's own mother tongue before beginning English, and that one should know also one's own people. Speaking at the Bikrampur Conference in 1915, Bose said:
“At that time, sending children to English schools was an aristocratic status symbol. In the vernacular school, to which I was sent, the son of the Muslim attendant of my father sat on my right side, and the son of a fisherman sat on my left. They were my playmates. I listened spellbound to their stories of birds, animals and aquatic creatures. Perhaps these stories created in my mind a keen interest in investigating the workings of Nature. When I returned home from school accompanied by my school fellows, my mother welcomed and fed all of us without discrimination. Although she was an orthodox old fashioned lady, she never considered herself guilty of impiety by treating these ‘untouchables’ as her own children. It was because of my childhood friendship with them that I could never feel that there were ‘creatures’ who might be labelled ‘low-caste’. I never realised that there existed a ‘problem’ common to the two communities, Hindus and Muslims.”
Bose joined the Hare School in 1869 and then St. Xavier’s School at Kolkata. In 1875, he passed the Entrance Examination (equivalent to school graduation) of University of Calcutta and was admitted to St. Xavier's College, Calcutta. At St. Xavier's, Bose came in contact with Jesuit Father Eugene Lafont, who played a significant role in developing his interest to natural science.[6][5] He received a bachelor's degree from University of Calcutta in 1879.
Bose wanted to go to England to compete for the Indian Civil Service. However, his father, a civil servant himself, canceled the plan. He wished his son to be a scholar, who would “rule nobody but himself.” Bose went to England to study Medicine at the University of London. However, he had to quit because of ill health. The odour in the dissection rooms is also said to have exacerbated his illness.
Through the recommendation of Anand Mohan, his brother-in-law (sister's husband) and the first Indian wrangler, he secured admission in Christ's College, Cambridge to study Natural Science. He received the Natural Science Tripos from the University of Cambridge and a BSc from the University of London in 1884. Among Bose’s teachers at Cambridge were Lord Rayleigh, Michael Foster, James Dewar, Francis Darwin, Francis Balfour, and Sidney Vines. At the time when Bose was a student at Cambridge, Prafulla Chandra Roy was a student at Edinburgh. They met in London and became intimate friends.
On the second day of a two-day seminar held on the occasion of 150th anniversary of Jagadish Chandra Bose on 28-29th July at The Asiatic Society, Kolkata Professor Shibaji Raha, Director of the Bose Institute, Kolkata told in his valedictory address that he had personally checked the register of the Cambridge University to confirm the fact that in addition to Tripos he received an M.A. as well from it in 1884.
Joining Presidency College
Jagadish Chandra Bose
Bose returned to India in 1885, carrying a letter from Fawcett, the economist to Lord Ripon, Viceroy of India. On Lord Ripon’s request Sir Alfred Croft, the Director of Public Instruction, appointed Bose officiating professor of physics in Presidency College. The principal, C. H. Tawney, protested against the appointment but had to accept it. Bose was not provided with facilities for research. On the contrary, 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 per month. Since Bose was officiating, he was offered a salary of only Rs. 100 per month. With remarkable sense of self respect and national pride he decided on a new form of protest. Bose 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 Bose’s skill in teaching and also his lofty character. As a result his appointment was made permanent with retrospective effect. He was given the full salary for the previous three years in a lump sum. Presidency College lacked a proper laboratory. Bose had to conduct his research in a small 24 square foot room. He devised equipment for the research with the help of one untrained tinsmith. Sister Nivedita wrote, “I was horrified to find the way in which a great worker could be subjected to continuous annoyance and petty difficulties ... The college routine was made as arduous as possible for him, so that he could not have the time he needed for investigation.” After his daily grind, which he of course performed with great conscientiousness, he carried out his research far into the night, in a small room in his college. Moreover, the policy of the British government for its colonies was not conducive to attempts at original research. Bose spent his hard-earned money for making experimental equipment. Within a decade of his joining Presidency College, he emerged a pioneer in the incipient research field of wireless waves.
Marriage
In 1887, Bose married Abala, daughter of the renowned Brahmo reformer Durga Mohan Das. Abala was awarded 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 Bose was in a financial crisis 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, but managed to survive and eventually repaid the debts of Bose's father. Bose's parents lived for some years after their debts were cleared.
Radio research
The British theoretical physicist James Clerk Maxwell mathematically predicted the existence of electromagnetic waves of diverse wavelengths, but he died in 1879 before his prediction was experimentally verified. British physicist Oliver Lodge demonstrated the existence of Maxwell’s waves transmitted along wires in 1887-88. The German physicist Heinrich Hertz showed experimentally, in 1888, the existence of electromagnetic waves in free space. Subsequently, Lodge pursued Hertz’s work and delivered a commemorative lecture in June 1894 (after Hertz’s death) and published it in book form. Lodge’s work caught the attention of scientists in different countries including Bose in India.
The first remarkable aspect of Bose’s follow up microwave research was that he reduced the waves to the millimetre level (about 5 mm wavelength). He realised the disadvantages of long waves for studying their light-like properties.
In 1893, Nikola Tesla demonstrated the first public radio communication. One year later, during a November 1894 (or 1895) public demonstration at Town Hall of Kolkata, Bose ignited gunpowder and rang a bell at a distance using millimetre range wavelength microwaves.[ Lieutenant Governor Sir William Mackenzie witnessed Bose's demonstration in the Kolkata Town Hall. Bose wrote in a Bengali essay, Adrisya Alok (Invisible Light), “The invisible light can easily pass through brick walls, buildings etc. Therefore, messages can be transmitted by means of it without the mediation of wires.” In Russia, Popov performed similar experiments. In December 1895, Popov's records indicate that he hoped for distant signalling with radio waves.
Bose’s first scientific paper, “On polarisation of electric rays by double-refracting crystals” was communicated to the Asiatic Society of Bengal in May 1895, within a year of Lodge’s paper. His second paper was communicated to the Royal Society of London by Lord Rayleigh in October 1895. In December 1895, the London journal the Electrician (Vol 36) published Bose’s paper, “On a new electro-polariscope”. At that time, the word ‘coherer’, coined by Lodge, was used in the English-speaking world for Hertzian wave receivers or detectors. The Electrician readily commented on Bose’s coherer. (December 1895). The Englishman (18 January 1896) quoted from the Electrician and commented as follows:
”Should Professor Bose succeed in perfecting and patenting his ‘Coherer’, we may in time see the whole system of coast lighting throughout the navigable world revolutionised by a Bengali scientist working single handed in our Presidency College Laboratory.”
Bose planned to “perfect his coherer” but never thought of patenting it.
In May 1897, two years after Bose's public demonstration in Kolkata, Marconi conducted his wireless signalling experiment on Salisbury Plain. Bose went to London on a lecture tour in 1896 and met Marconi, who was conducting wireless experiments for the British post office. In an interview, Bose expressed disinterest in commercial telegraphy and suggested others use his research work. In 1899, Bose announced the development of a "iron-mercury-iron coherer with telephone detector" in a paper presented at the Royal Society, London. It appears that Bose's demonstration of remote wireless signalling has priority over Marconi.[17] He was the first to use a semiconductor junction to detect radio waves, and he invented various now commonplace microwave components. In 1954, Pearson and Brattain gave priority to Bose for the use of a semi-conducting crystal as a detector of radio waves. Further work at millimetre wavelengths was almost nonexistent for nearly 50 years. In 1897, Bose described to the Royal Institution in London his research carried out in Kolkata at millimetre wavelengths. He used waveguides, horn antennas, dielectric lenses, various polarisers and even semiconductors at frequencies as high as 60 GHz; much of his original equipment is still in existence, now at the Bose Institute in Kolkata. A 1.3 mm multi-beam receiver now in use on the NRAO 12 Metre Telescope, Arizona, U.S.A. incorporates concepts from his original 1897 papers.
Sir Nevill Mott, Nobel Laureate in 1977 for his own contributions to solid-state electronics, remarked that "J.C. Bose was at least 60 years ahead of his time" and "In fact, he had anticipated the existence of P-type and N-type semiconductors."
Plant research
His next contribution to science was in plant physiology. He forwarded a theory for the ascent of sap in plants in 1927, his theory contributed to the vital theory of ascent of sap. According to his theory, electromechanical pulsations of living cells were responsible for the ascent of sap in plants.
He was skeptical about the then, and still now, most popular theory for the ascent of sap, the tension-cohesion theory of Dixon and Joly, first proposed in 1894. The 'CP theory', proposed by Canny in 1995, validates this skepticism. Canny experimentally demonstrated pumping in the living cells in the junction of the endodermis.
In his research in plant stimuli, he showed with the help of his newly invented crescograph that plants responded to various stimuli as if they had nervous systems like that of animals. He therefore found a parallelism between animal and plant tissues. His experiments showed that plants grow faster in pleasant music and their growth is retarded in noise or harsh sound. This was experimentally verified later on[citation needed].
His major contribution in the field of biophysics was the demonstration of the electrical nature of the conduction of various stimuli (wounds, chemical agents) in plants, which were earlier thought to be of a chemical nature. These claims were experimentally proved by Wildon et al. (Nature, 1992, 360, 62–65). He also studied for the first time action of microwaves in plant tissues and corresponding changes in the cell membrane potential, mechanism of effect of seasons in plants, effect of chemical inhibitor on plant stimuli, effect of temperature etc. He claimed that plants can "feel pain, understand affection etc.," from the analysis of the nature of variation of the cell membrane potential of plants, under different circumstances.
Science fiction
In 1896, Bose wrote Niruddesher Kahini, the first major work in Bangla science fiction. Later, he added the story in the Obbakto book as Polatok Tufan. He was the first science fiction writer in the Bengali language.
Bose and patents
Bose was not interested in patenting his invention. In his Friday Evening Discourse at the Royal Institution, London, he made public his construction of the coherer. Thus The Electric Engineer expressed "surprise that no secret was at anytime made as to its construction, so that it has been open to all the world to adopt it for practical and possibly moneymaking purposes." Bose declined an offer from a wireless apparatus manufacturer for signing a remunerative agreement. One of Bose's American friends, Sara Chapman Bull, succeeded in persuading him to file a patent application for "detector for electrical disturbances". The application was filed on September 30, 1901 and it was granted on 29 March 1904 as US patent 755840 .
Speaking in New Delhi in August 2006, at a seminar titled Owning the Future: Ideas and Their Role in the Digital Age, Dr. V S Ramamurthy, the Chairman of the Board of Governors of IIT Delhi, stressed the attitude of Bose towards patents:
"His reluctance to any form of patenting is well known. It was contained in his letter to (Indian Nobel laureate) Rabindranath Tagore dated May 17, 1901 from London. It was not that Sir Jagadish was unaware of patents and its advantages. He was the first Indian to get a US Patent (No: 755840) in 1904. And Sir Jagadish was not alone in his avowed reluctance to patenting. Roentgen, Pierre Curie and others also chose the path of no patenting on moral grounds."
Bose also recorded his attitude towards patents in his inaugural lecture at the foundation of the Bose Institute, on November 30, 1917.
Legacy
Bose’s place in history has now 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 later. They include various antennas, polarisers, and waveguides, which remain in use in modern forms today.
Commemorating his birth centenary in 1958, the JBNSTS scholarship programme was started in West Bengal.
Publications
Journals
- Nature published about 27 papers.
- J. C. Bose. On Elektromotive "Wave accompanying Mechanical Disturbance in Metals in Contact with Electrolyte. Proc. Roy. Soc. 70, 273—294, 1902.
- J. C. Bose. Sur la response electrique de la matiere vivante et animee soumise ä une excitation.—Deux proceeds d'observation de la r^ponse de la matiere vivante. Journ. de phys. (4) 1, 481—491, 1902.
Books
- Response in the Living and Non-living, 1902
- Plant response as a means of physiological investigation, 1906
- Comparative Electro-physiology: A Physico-physiological Study, 1907
- Researches on Irritability of Plants, 1913
- Physiology of the Ascent of Sap, 1923
- The physiology of photosynthesis, 1924
- The Nervous Mechanisms of Plants, 1926
- Plant Autographs and Their Revelations, 1927
- Growth and tropic movements of plants, 1928
- Motor mechanism of plants, 1928
Other
- J.C. Bose, Collected Physical Papers. New York, N.Y.: Longmans, Green and Co., 1927
- Abyakta (Bangla), 1922
Honors
- Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire (CIE) (1903)
- Companion of the Order of the Star of India (CSI) (1912)
- Knighthood, 1917
- Fellow of the Royal Society (1920)
- Member of the Vienna Academy of Sciences, 1928
- President of the 14th session of the Indian Science Congress in 1927.
- Member of Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters in 1929.
- Member of the League of Nations' Committee for Intellectual Cooperation
- Founding fellow of the National Institute of Sciences of India (now renamed as the Indian National Science Academy)
- The Indian Botanical Gardens, Howrah was renamed as the Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Botanical Garden on June 25, 2009 in honor of Jagadish Chandra Bose.
नेताजी सुभाषचन्द्र बोस
उपनाम : | नेताजी |
जन्मस्थल : | |
मृत्युस्थल: | ताइवान (विवादित) |
आन्दोलन: | भारतीय स्वतंत्रता संग्राम |
प्रमुख संगठन: | |
सुभाषचन्द्र बोस (बांग्ला: সুভাষ চন্দ্র বসু शुभाष चॉन्द्रो बोशु) (२३ जनवरी १८९७ - १८ अगस्त, १९४५ विवादित) जो नेताजी नाम से भी जाने जाते हैं, भारत के स्वतंत्रता संग्राम के अग्रणी नेता थे।
द्वितीय विश्वयुद्ध के दौरान, अंग्रेज़ों के खिलाफ लड़ने के लिये, उन्होंने जापान के सहयोग से आज़ाद हिन्द फौज का गठन किया था। उनके द्वारा दिया गया जय हिन्द का नारा, भारत का राष्ट्रीय नारा बन गया हैं।
१९४४ में अमेरिकी पत्रकार लुई फिशर से बात करते हुए, महात्मा गाँधी ने नेताजी को देशभक्तों का देशभक्त कहा था। नेताजी का योगदान और प्रभाव इतना बडा था कि कहा जाता हैं कि अगर उस समय नेताजी भारत में उपस्थित रहते, तो शायद भारत एक संघ राष्ट्र बना रहता और भारत का विभाजन न होता। स्वयं गाँधीजी ने इस बात को स्वीकार किया था।
जन्म और कौटुंबिक जीवन
नेताजी सुभाषचन्द्र बोस का जन्म 23 जनवरी, 1897 को उड़ीसा के कटक शहर में हुआ था। उनके पिता का नाम जानकीनाथ बोस और माँ का नाम प्रभावती था। जानकीनाथ बोस कटक शहर के मशहूर वकील थे। पहले वे सरकारी वकील थे, मगर बाद में उन्होंने निजी प्रैक्टिस शुरू कर दी थी। उन्होंने कटक की महापालिका में लंबे समय तक काम किया था और वे बंगाल विधानसभा के सदस्य भी रहे थे। अंग्रेज़ सरकार ने उन्हें रायबहादुर का खिताब दिया था। प्रभावती देवी के पिता का नाम गंगानारायण दत्त था। दत्त परिवार को कोलकाता का एक कुलीन परिवार माना जाता था। प्रभावती और जानकीनाथ बोस की कुल मिलाकर 14 संतानें थी, जिसमें 6 बेटियाँ और 8 बेटे थे। सुभाषचंद्र उनकी नौवीं संतान और पाँचवें बेटे थे। अपने सभी भाइयों में से सुभाष को सबसे अधिक लगाव शरदचंद्र से था। शरदबाबू प्रभावती और जानकीनाथ के दूसरे बेटे थें। सुभाष उन्हें मेजदा कहते थें। शरदबाबू की पत्नी का नाम विभावती था।
कोलकाता के स्वतंत्रता सेनानी, देशबंधु चित्तरंजन दास के कार्य से प्रेरित होकर, सुभाष दासबाबू के साथ काम करना चाहते थे। इंग्लैंड से उन्होंने दासबाबू को खत लिखकर, उनके साथ काम करने की इच्छा प्रकट की। रवींद्रनाथ ठाकुर की सलाह के अनुसार, भारत वापस आने पर वे सर्वप्रथम मुम्बई गये और महात्मा गाँधी से मिले। मुम्बई में गाँधीजी मणिभवन में निवास करते थे। वहाँ, 20 जुलाई, 1921 को महात्मा गाँधी और सुभाषचंद्र बोस के बीच पहली बार मुलाकात हुई। गाँधीजी ने भी उन्हें कोलकाता जाकर दासबाबू के साथ काम करने की सलाह दी। इसके बाद सुभाषबाबू कोलकाता आ गए और दासबाबू से मिले। दासबाबू उन्हें देखकर बहुत खुश हुए। उन दिनों गाँधीजी ने अंग्रेज़ सरकार के खिलाफ असहयोग आंदोलन चलाया था। दासबाबू इस आंदोलन का बंगाल में नेतृत्व कर रहे थे। उनके साथ सुभाषबाबू इस आंदोलन में सहभागी हो गए 1922 में दासबाबू ने कांग्रेस के अंतर्गत स्वराज पार्टी की स्थापना की। विधानसभा के अंदर से अंग्रेज़ सरकार का विरोध करने के लिए, कोलकाता महापालिका का चुनाव स्वराज पार्टी ने लड़कर जीता। स्वयं दासबाबू कोलकाता के महापौर बन गए। उन्होंने सुभाषबाबू को महापालिका का प्रमुख कार्यकारी अधिकारी बनाया। सुभाषबाबू ने अपने कार्यकाल में कोलकाता महापालिका का पूरा ढाँचा और काम करने का तरीका ही बदल डाला। कोलकाता के रास्तों के अंग्रेज़ी नाम बदलकर, उन्हें भारतीय नाम दिए गए। स्वतंत्रता संग्राम में प्राण न्यौछावर करनेवालों के परिवार के सदस्यों को महापालिका में नौकरी मिलने लगी।
बहुत जल्द ही, सुभाषबाबू देश के एक महत्वपूर्ण युवा नेता बन गए। पंडित जवाहरलाल नेहरू के साथ सुभाषबाबू ने कांग्रेस के अंतर्गत युवकों की इंडिपेंडन्स लिग शुरू की। 1928 में जब साइमन कमीशन भारत आया, तब कांग्रेस ने उसे काले झंडे दिखाए। कोलकाता में सुभाषबाबू ने इस आंदोलन का नेतृत्व किया। साइमन कमीशन को जवाब देने के लिए, कांग्रेस ने भारत का भावी संविधान बनाने का काम आठ सदस्यीय आयोग को सौंपा। पंडित मोतीलाल नेहरू इस आयोग के अध्यक्ष और सुभाषबाबू उसके एक सदस्य थे। इस आयोग ने नेहरू रिपोर्ट पेश की। 1928 में कांग्रेस का वार्षिक अधिवेशन पंडित मोतीलाल नेहरू की अध्यक्षता में कोलकाता में हुआ। इस अधिवेशन में सुभाषबाबू ने खाकी गणवेश धारण करके पंडित मोतीलाल नेहरू को सैन्य तरीके से सलामी दी। गाँधीजी उन दिनों पूर्ण स्वराज्य की मांग से सहमत नहीं थे। इस अधिवेशन में उन्होंने अंग्रेज़ सरकार से डोमिनियन स्टेटस माँगने की ठान ली थी। लेकिन सुभाषबाबू और पंडित जवाहरलाल नेहरू को पूर्ण स्वराज की मांग से पीछे हटना मंजूर नहीं था। अंत में यह तय किया गया कि अंग्रेज़ सरकार को [डोमिनियन स्टेटस]] देने के लिए, एक साल का वक्त दिया जाए। अगर एक साल में अंग्रेज़ सरकार ने यह मॉंग पूरी नहीं की, तो कांग्रेस पूर्ण स्वराज की मांग करेगी। अंग्रेज़ सरकार ने यह मांग पूरी नहीं की। इसलिए 1930 में जब कांग्रेस का वार्षिक अधिवेशन पंडित जवाहरलाल नेहरू की अध्यक्षता में लाहौर में हुआ, तब ऐसा तय किया गया कि 26 जनवरी का दिन स्वतंत्रता दिन के रूप में मनाया जाएगा।
26 जनवरी, 1931 के दिन कोलकाता में राष्ट्रध्वज फैलाकर सुभाषबाबू एक विशाल मोर्चा का नेतृत्व कर रहे थे। तब पुलिस ने उनपर लाठी चलायी और उन्हे घायल कर दिया। जब सुभाषबाबू जेल में थे, तब गाँधीजी ने अंग्रेज सरकार से समझोता किया और सब कैदीयों को रिहा किया गया। लेकिन अंग्रेज सरकार ने सरदार भगत सिंह जैसे क्रांतिकारकों को रिहा करने से इन्कार कर दिया। भगत सिंह की फॉंसी माफ कराने के लिए, गाँधीजी ने सरकार से बात की। सुभाषबाबू चाहते थे कि इस विषय पर गाँधीजी अंग्रेज सरकार के साथ किया गया समझोता तोड दे। लेकिन गाँधीजी अपनी ओर से दिया गया वचन तोडने को राजी नहीं थे। अंग्रेज सरकार अपने स्थान पर अडी रही और भगत सिंह और उनके साथियों को फॉंसी दी गयी। भगत सिंह को न बचा पाने पर, सुभाषबाबू गाँधीजी और कांग्रेस के तरिकों से बहुत नाराज हो गए।
कारावास
१९३९ में बोस का आल इण्डिया कॉन्ग्रेस सभा में आगमन छाया सौजन्य:टोनी मित्रा
अपने सार्वजनिक जीवन में सुभाषबाबू को कुल ग्यारह बार कारावास हुआ। सबसे पहले उन्हें 1921 में छे महिनों का कारावास हुआ।
1925 में गोपिनाथ साहा नामक एक क्रांतिकारी कोलकाता के पुलिस अधिक्षक चार्लस टेगार्ट को मारना चाहता था। उसने गलती से अर्नेस्ट डे नामक एक व्यापारी को मार डाला। इसके लिए उसे फॉंसी की सजा दी गयी। गोपिनाथ को फॉंसी होने के बाद सुभाषबाबू जोर से रोये। उन्होने गोपिनाथ का शव मॉंगकर उसका अंत्यसंस्कार किया। इससे अंग्रेज़ सरकार ने यह निष्कर्ष किया कि सुभाषबाबू ज्वलंत क्रांतिकारकों से न ही संबंध रखते हैं, बल्कि वे ही उन क्रांतिकारकों का स्फूर्तीस्थान हैं। इसी बहाने अंग्रेज़ सरकार ने सुभाषबाबू को गिरफतार किया और बिना कोई मुकदमा चलाए, उन्हें अनिश्चित कालखंड के लिए म्यानमार के मंडाले कारागृह में बंदी बनाया।
5 नवंबर, 1925 के दिन, देशबंधू चित्तरंजन दास कोलकाता में चल बसें। सुभाषबाबू ने उनकी मृत्यू की खबर मंडाले कारागृह में रेडियो पर सुनी।
मंडाले कारागृह में रहते समय सुभाषबाबू की तबियत बहुत खराब हो गयी। उन्हें तपेदिक हो गया। परंतू अंग्रेज़ सरकार ने फिर भी उन्हें रिहा करने से इन्कार कर दिया। सरकार ने उन्हें रिहा करने के लिए यह शर्त रखी की वे इलाज के लिए यूरोप चले जाए। लेकिन सरकार ने यह तो स्पष्ट नहीं किया था कि इलाज के बाद वे भारत कब लौट सकते हैं। इसलिए सुभाषबाबू ने यह शर्त स्वीकार नहीं की। आखिर में परिस्थिती इतनी कठिन हो गयी की शायद वे कारावास में ही मर जायेंगे। अंग्रेज़ सरकार यह खतरा भी नहीं उठाना चाहती थी, कि सुभाषबाबू की कारागृह में मृत्यू हो जाए। इसलिए सरकार ने उन्हे रिहा कर दिया। फिर सुभाषबाबू इलाज के लिए डलहौजी चले गए।
1930 में सुभाषबाबू कारावास में थे। तब उन्हे कोलकाता के महापौर चुना गया। इसलिए सरकार उन्हे रिहा करने पर मजबूर हो गयी।
1932 में सुभाषबाबू को फिर से कारावास हुआ। इस बार उन्हे अलमोडा जेल में रखा गया। अलमोडा जेल में उनकी तबियत फिर से नादुरूस्त हो गयी। वैद्यकीय सलाह पर सुभाषबाबू इस बार इलाज के लिए यूरोप जाने को राजी हो गए।
यूरोप प्रवास
1933 से 1936 तक सुभाषबाबू यूरोप में रहे।
यूरोप में सुभाषबाबू ने अपनी सेहत का ख्याल रखते समय, अपना कार्य जारी रखा। वहाँ वे इटली के नेता मुसोलिनी से मिले, जिन्होंने उन्हें, भारत के स्वतंत्रता संग्राम में सहायता करने का वचन दिया। आयरलैंड के नेता डी वॅलेरा सुभाषबाबू के अच्छे दोस्त बन गए।
जब सुभाषबाबू यूरोप में थे, तब पंडित जवाहरलाल नेहरू की पत्नी कमला नेहरू का ऑस्ट्रिया में निधन हो गया। सुभाषबाबू ने वहाँ जाकर पंडित जवाहरलाल नेहरू को सांत्वना दिया।
बाद में सुभाषबाबू यूरोप में विठ्ठल भाई पटेल से मिले। विठ्ठल भाई पटेल के साथ सुभाषबाबू ने पटेल-बोस विश्लेषण प्रसिद्ध किया, जिस में उन दोनों ने गाँधीजी के नेतृत्व की बहुत गहरी निंदा की। बाद में विठ्ठल भाई पटेल बीमार पड गए, तब सुभाषबाबू ने उनकी बहुत सेवा की। मगर विठ्ठल भाई पटेल का निधन हो गया।
विठ्ठल भाई पटेल ने अपनी वसीयत में अपनी करोडों की संपत्ती सुभाषबाबू के नाम कर दी। मगर उनके निधन के पश्चात, उनके भाई सरदार वल्लभ भाई पटेल ने इस वसीयत को स्वीकार नहीं किया और उसपर अदालत में मुकदमा चलाया। यह मुकदमा जितकर, सरदार वल्लभ भाई पटेल ने वह संपत्ती, गाँधीजी के हरिजन सेवा कार्य को भेट दे दी।
1934 में सुभाषबाबू को उनके पिता मृत्त्यूशय्या पर होने की खबर मिली। इसलिए वे हवाई जहाज से कराची होकर कोलकाता लौटे। कराची में उन्हे पता चला की उनके पिता की मृत्त्यू हो चुकी थी। कोलकाता पहुँचतेही, अंग्रेज सरकार ने उन्हे गिरफ्तार कर दिया और कई दिन जेल में रखकर, वापस यूरोप भेज दिया।
हरीपुरा कांग्रेस का अध्यक्षपद
नेताजी सुभाषचन्द्र बोस, महात्मा गाँधी के साथ हरिपुरा मे सन 1938
1938 में कांग्रेस का वार्षिक अधिवेशन हरिपुरा में होने का तय हुआ था। इस अधिवेशन से पहले गाँधीजी ने कांग्रेस अध्यक्षपद के लिए सुभाषबाबू को चुना। यह कांग्रेस का ५१वा अधिवेशन था। इसलिए कांग्रेस अध्यक्ष सुभाषबाबू का स्वागत 51 बैलों ने खींचे हुए रथ में किया गया।
इस अधिवेशन में सुभाषबाबू का अध्यक्षीय भाषण बहूत ही प्रभावी हुआ। किसी भी भारतीय राजकीय व्यक्ती ने शायद ही इतना प्रभावी भाषण कभी किया हो।
अपने अध्यक्षपद के कार्यकाल में सुभाषबाबू ने योजना आयोग की स्थापना की। पंडित जवाहरलाल नेहरू इस के अध्यक्ष थे। सुभाषबाबू ने बेंगलोर में मशहूर वैज्ञानिक सर विश्वेश्वरैय्या की अध्यक्षता में एक विज्ञान परिषद भी ली।
1937 में जापान ने चीन पर आक्रमण किया। सुभाषबाबू की अध्यक्षता में कांग्रेस ने चिनी जनता की सहायता के लिए, डॉ द्वारकानाथ कोटणीस के नेतृत्व में वैद्यकीय पथक भेजने का निर्णय लिया। आगे चलकर जब सुभाषबाबू ने भारत के स्वतंत्रता संग्राम में जापान से सहयोग किया, तब कई लोग उन्हे जापान के हस्तक और फॅसिस्ट कहने लगे। मगर इस घटना से यह सिद्ध होता हैं कि सुभाषबाबू न ही तो जापान के हस्तक थे, न ही वे फॅसिस्ट विचारधारा से सहमत थे।
कांग्रेस के अध्यक्षपद से इस्तीफा
1938 में गाँधीजी ने कांग्रेस अध्यक्षपद के लिए सुभाषबाबू को चुना तो था, मगर गाँधीजी को सुभाषबाबू की कार्यपद्धती पसंद नहीं आयी। इसी दौरान युरोप में द्वितीय विश्वयुद्ध के बादल छा गए थे। सुभाषबाबू चाहते थे कि इंग्लैंड की इस कठिनाई का लाभ उठाकर, भारत का स्वतंत्रता संग्राम अधिक तीव्र किया जाए। उन्होने अपने अध्यक्षपद की कारकीर्द में इस तरफ कदम उठाना भी शुरू कर दिया था। गाँधीजी इस विचारधारा से सहमत नहीं थे।
1939 में जब नया कांग्रेस अध्यक्ष चुनने का वक्त आया, तब सुभाषबाबू चाहते थे कि कोई ऐसी व्यक्ती अध्यक्ष बन जाए, जो इस मामले में किसी दबाव के सामने न झुके। ऐसी कोई दुसरी व्यक्ती सामने न आने पर, सुभाषबाबू ने खुद कांग्रेस अध्यक्ष बने रहना चाहा। लेकिन गाँधीजी अब उन्हे अध्यक्षपद से हटाना चाहते थे। गाँधीजी ने अध्यक्षपद के लिए पट्टाभी सितारमैय्या को चुना। कविवर्य रविंद्रनाथ ठाकूर ने गाँधीजी को खत लिखकर सुभाषबाबू को ही अध्यक्ष बनाने की विनंती की। प्रफुल्लचंद्र राय और मेघनाद सहा जैसे वैज्ञानिक भी सुभाषबाबू को फिर से अध्यक्ष के रूप में देखना चाहतें थे। लेकिन गाँधीजी ने इस मामले में किसी की बात नहीं मानी। कोई समझोता न हो पाने पर, बहुत सालो के बाद, कांग्रेस अध्यक्षपद के लिए चुनाव लडा गया।
सब समझते थे कि जब महात्मा गाँधी ने पट्टाभी सितारमैय्या का साथ दिया हैं, तब वे चुनाव आसानी से जीत जाएंगे। लेकिन वास्तव में, सुभाषबाबू को चुनाव में 1580 मत मिल गए और पट्टाभी सितारमैय्या को 1377 मत मिलें। गाँधीजी के विरोध के बावजूद सुभाषबाबू 203 मतों से यह चुनाव जीत गए।
मगर चुनाव के निकाल के साथ बात खत्म नहीं हुई। गाँधीजी ने पट्टाभी सितारमैय्या की हार को अपनी हार बताकर, अपने साथीयों से कह दिया कि अगर वें सुभाषबाबू के तरिकों से सहमत नहीं हैं, तो वें कांग्रेस से हट सकतें हैं। इसके बाद कांग्रेस कार्यकारिणी के 14 में से 12 सदस्यों ने इस्तीफा दे दिया। पंडित जवाहरलाल नेहरू तटस्थ रहें और अकेले शरदबाबू सुभाषबाबू के साथ बनें रहें।
1939 का वार्षिक कांग्रेस अधिवेशन त्रिपुरी में हुआ। इस अधिवेशन के समय सुभाषबाबू तेज बुखार से इतने बीमार पड गए थे, कि उन्हे स्ट्रेचर पर लेटकर अधिवेशन में आना पडा। गाँधीजी इस अधिवेशन में उपस्थित नहीं रहे। गाँधीजी के साथीयों ने सुभाषबाबू से बिल्कुल सहकार्य नहीं दिया।
अधिवेशन के बाद सुभाषबाबू ने समझोते के लिए बहुत कोशिश की। लेकिन गाँधीजी और उनके साथीयों ने उनकी एक न मानी। परिस्थिती ऐसी बन गयी कि सुभाषबाबू कुछ काम ही न कर पाए। आखिर में तंग आकर, 29 अप्रैल, 1939 को सुभाषबाबू ने कांग्रेस अध्यक्षपद से इस्तीफा दे दिया।
फॉरवर्ड ब्लॉक की स्थापना
3 मई, 1939 के दिन, सुभाषबाबू नें कांग्रेस के अंतर्गत फॉरवर्ड ब्लॉक के नाम से अपनी पार्टी की स्थापना की। कुछ दिन बाद, सुभाषबाबू को कांग्रेस से निकाला गया। बाद में फॉरवर्ड ब्लॉक अपने आप एक स्वतंत्र पार्टी बन गयी।
द्वितीय विश्वयुद्ध शुरू होने से पहले से ही, फॉरवर्ड ब्लॉक ने स्वतंत्रता संग्राम अधिक तीव्र करने के लिए, जनजागृती शुरू की। इसलिए अंग्रेज सरकार ने सुभाषबाबू सहित फॉरवर्ड ब्लॉक के सभी मुख्य नेताओ को कैद कर दिया। द्वितीय विश्वयुद्ध के दौरान सुभाषबाबू जेल में निष्क्रिय रहना नहीं चाहते थे। सरकार को उन्हे रिहा करने पर मजबूर करने के लिए सुभाषबाबू ने जेल में आमरण उपोषण शुरू कर दिया। तब सरकार ने उन्हे रिहा कर दिया। मगर अंग्रेज सरकार यह नहीं चाहती थी, कि सुभाषबाबू युद्ध के दौरान मुक्त रहें। इसलिए सरकार ने उन्हे उनके ही घर में नजरकैद कर के रखा।
नजरकैद से पलायन
नजरकैद से निकलने के लिए सुभाषबाबू ने एक योजना बनायी। 16 जनवरी, 1941 को वे पुलिस को चकमा देने के लिये एक पठान मोहम्मद जियाउद्दीन का भेष धरकर, अपने घर से भाग निकले। शरदबाबू के बडे बेटे शिशिर ने उन्हे अपनी गाडी से कोलकाता से दूर, गोमोह तक पहुँचाया। गोमोह रेल्वे स्टेशन से फ्रंटियर मेल पकडकर वे पेशावर पहुँचे। पेशावर में उन्हे फॉरवर्ड ब्लॉक के एक सहकारी, मियां अकबर शाह मिले। मियां अकबर शाह ने उनकी मुलाकात, कीर्ती किसान पार्टी के भगतराम तलवार से कर दी। भगतराम तलवार के साथ में, सुभाषबाबू पेशावर से अफ़्ग़ानिस्तान की राजधानी काबुल की ओर निकल पडे। इस सफर में भगतराम तलवार, रहमतखान नाम के पठान बने थे और सुभाषबाबू उनके गूंगे-बहरे चाचा बने थे। पहाडियों में पैदल चलते हुए उन्होने यह सफर पूरा किया।
काबुल में सुभाषबाबू दो महिनों तक उत्तमचंद मल्होत्रा नामक एक भारतीय व्यापारी के घर में रहे। वहाँ उन्होने पहले रूसी दूतावास में प्रवेश पाना चाहा। इस में नाकामयाब रहने पर, उन्होने जर्मन और इटालियन दूतावासों में प्रवेश पाने की कोशिश की। इटालियन दूतावास में उनकी कोशिश सफल रही। जर्मन और इटालियन दूतावासों ने उनकी सहायता की। आखिर में ओर्लांदो मात्सुता नामक इटालियन व्यक्ति बनकर, सुभाषबाबू काबुल से रेल्वे से निकलकर रूस की राजधानी मॉस्को होकर जर्मनी की राजधानी बर्लिन पहुँचे।
नाजी जर्मनी में प्रवास एवं हिटलर से मुलाकात
बर्लिन में सुभाषबाबू सर्वप्रथम रिबेनट्रोप जैसे जर्मनी के अन्य नेताओ से मिले। उन्होने जर्मनी में भारतीय स्वतंत्रता संगठन और आजाद हिंद रेडिओ की स्थापना की। इसी दौरान सुभाषबाबू, नेताजी नाम से जाने जाने लगे। जर्मन सरकार के एक मंत्री एडॅम फॉन ट्रॉट सुभाषबाबू के अच्छे दोस्त बन गए।
आखिर 29 मई, 1942 के दिन, सुभाषबाबू जर्मनी के सर्वोच्च नेता एडॉल्फ हिटलर से मिले। लेकिन हिटलर को भारत के विषय में विशेष रूची नहीं थी। उन्होने सुभाषबाबू को सहायता का कोई स्पष्ट वचन नहीं दिया।
कई साल पहले हिटलर ने माईन काम्फ नामक अपना आत्मचरित्र लिखा था। इस किताब में उन्होने भारत और भारतीय लोगों की बुराई की थी। इस विषय पर सुभाषबाबू ने हिटलर से अपनी नाराजी व्यक्त की। हिटलर ने अपने किये पर माँफी माँगी और माईन काम्फ की अगली आवृत्ती से वह परिच्छेद निकालने का वचन दिया।
अंत में, सुभाषबाबू को पता चला कि हिटलर और जर्मनी से उन्हे कुछ और नहीं मिलनेवाला हैं। इसलिए 8 मार्च, 1943 के दिन, जर्मनी के कील बंदर में, वे अपने साथी अबिद हसन सफरानी के साथ, एक जर्मन पनदुब्बी में बैठकर, पूर्व आशिया की तरफ निकल गए। यह जर्मन पनदुब्बी उन्हे हिंदी महासागर में मादागास्कर के किनारे तक लेकर आई। वहाँ वे दोनो खूँखार समुद्र में से तैरकर जापानी पनदुब्बी तक पहुँच गए। द्वितीय विश्वयुद्ध के काल में, किसी भी दो देशों की नौसेनाओ की पनदुब्बीयों के दौरान, नागरी लोगों की यह एकमात्र बदली हुई थी। यह जापानी पनदुब्बी उन्हे इंडोनेशिया के पादांग बंदर तक लेकर आई।
पूर्व एशिया में अभियान
स्वाधीन भारत की अंतरिम सरकार
पूर्व एशिया पहुँचकर सुभाषबाबू ने सर्वप्रथम, वयोवृद्ध क्रांतिकारी रासबिहारी बोस से भारतीय स्वतंत्रता परिषद का नेतृत्व सँभाला। सिंगापुर के फरेर पार्क में रासबिहारी बोस ने भारतीय स्वतंत्रता परिषद का नेतृत्व सुभाषबाबू को सौंप दिया।
जापान के प्रधानमंत्री जनरल हिदेकी तोजो ने, नेताजी के व्यक्तित्व से प्रभावित होकर, उन्हे सहकार्य करने का आश्वासन दिया। कई दिन पश्चात, नेताजी ने जापान की संसद डायट के सामने भाषण किया।
21 अक्तूबर, 1943 के दिन, नेताजी ने सिंगापुर में अर्जी-हुकुमत-ए-आजाद-हिंद (स्वाधीन भारत की अंतरिम सरकार) की स्थापना की। वे खुद इस सरकार के राष्ट्रपति, प्रधानमंत्री और युद्धमंत्री बने। इस सरकार को कुल नौ देशों ने मान्यता दी। नेताजी आज़ाद हिन्द फौज के प्रधान सेनापति भी बन गए।
आज़ाद हिन्द फौज में जापानी सेना ने अंग्रेजों की फौज से पकडे हुए भारतीय युद्धबंदियोंको भर्ती किया गया। आज़ाद हिन्द फ़ौज में औरतो के लिए झाँसी की रानी रेजिमेंट भी बनायी गयी।
पूर्व एशिया में नेताजी ने अनेक भाषण करके वहाँ स्थायिक भारतीय लोगों से आज़ाद हिन्द फौज में भरती होने का और उसे आर्थिक मदद करने का आवाहन किया। उन्होने अपने आवाहन में संदेश दिया तुम मुझे खून दो, मैं तुम्हे आजादी दूँगा।
द्वितीय विश्वयुद्ध के दौरान आज़ाद हिन्द फौज ने जापानी सेना के सहयोग से भारत पर आक्रमण किया। अपनी फौज को प्रेरित करने के लिए नेताजी ने चलो दिल्ली का नारा दिया। दोनो फौजो ने अंग्रेजों से अंदमान और निकोबार द्वीप जीत लिए। यह द्वीप अर्जी-हुकुमत-ए-आजाद-हिंद के अनुशासन में रहें। नेताजी ने इन द्वीपों का शहीद और स्वराज द्वीप ऐसा नामकरण किया। दोनो फौजो ने मिलकर इंफाल और कोहिमा पर आक्रमण किया। लेकिन बाद में अंग्रेजों का पगडा भारी पडा और दोनो फौजो को पिछे हटना पडा।
जब आज़ाद हिन्द फौज पिछे हट रही थी, तब जापानी सेना ने नेताजी के भाग जाने की व्यवस्था की। परंतु नेताजी ने झाँसी की रानी रेजिमेंट की लडकियों के साथ सैकडो मिल चलते जाना पसंद किया। इस प्रकार नेताजी ने सच्चे नेतृत्व का एक आदर्श ही बनाकर रखा।
6 जुलाई, 1944 को आजाद हिंद रेडिओ पर अपने भाषण के माध्यम से गाँधीजी से बात करते हुए, नेताजी ने जापान से सहायता लेने का अपना कारण और अर्जी-हुकुमत-ए-आजाद-हिंद तथा आज़ाद हिन्द फौज की स्थापना के उद्येश्य के बारे में बताया। इस भाषण के दौरान, नेताजी ने गाँधीजी को राष्ट्रपिता बुलाकर अपनी जंग के लिए उनका आशिर्वाद माँगा । इस प्रकार, नेताजी ने गाँधीजी को सर्वप्रथम राष्ट्रपिता बुलाया।
लापता होना और मृत्यु की खबर
द्वितीय विश्वयुद्ध में जापान की हार के बाद, नेताजी को नया रास्ता ढूँढना जरूरी था। उन्होने रूस से सहायता माँगने का निश्चय किया था।
18 अगस्त, 1945 को नेताजी हवाई जहाज से मांचुरिया की तरफ जा रहे थे। इस सफर के दौरान वे लापता हो गए। इस दिन के बाद वे कभी किसी को दिखाई नहीं दिये।
23 अगस्त, 1945 को जापान की दोमेई खबर संस्था ने दुनिया को खबर दी, कि 18 अगस्त के दिन, नेताजी का हवाई जहाज ताइवान की भूमि पर दुर्घटनाग्रस्त हो गया था और उस दुर्घटना में बुरी तरह से घायल होकर नेताजी ने अस्पताल में अंतिम साँस ले ली थी।
दुर्घटनाग्रस्त हवाई जहाज में नेताजी के साथ उनके सहकारी कर्नल हबिबूर रहमान थे। उन्होने नेताजी को बचाने का निश्च्हय किया, लेकिन वे कामयाब नहीं रहे। फिर नेताजी की अस्थियाँ जापान की राजधानी तोकियो में रेनकोजी नामक बौद्ध मंदिर में रखी गयी।
स्वतंत्रता के पश्चात, भारत सरकार ने इस घटना की जाँच करने के लिए, 1956 और 1977 में दो बार एक आयोग को नियुक्त किया। दोनो बार यह नतिजा निकला की नेताजी उस विमान दुर्घटना में ही मारे गये थे। लेकिन जिस ताइवान की भूमि पर यह दुर्घटना होने की खबर थी, उस ताइवान देश की सरकार से तो, इन दोनो आयोगो ने बात ही नहीं की।
1999 में मनोज कुमार मुखर्जी के नेतृत्व में तीसरा आयोग बनाया गया। 2005 में ताइवान सरकार ने मुखर्जी आयोग को बता दिया कि 1945 में ताइवान की भूमि पर कोई हवाई जहाज दुर्घटनाग्रस्त हुआ ही नहीं था। 2005 में मुखर्जी आयोग ने भारत सरकार को अपनी रिपोर्ट पेश की, जिस में उन्होने कहा, कि नेताजी की मृत्यु उस विमान दुर्घटना में होने का कोई सबूत नहीं हैं। लेकिन भारत सरकार ने मुखर्जी आयोग की रिपोर्ट को अस्वीकार कर दिया।
18 अगस्त, 1945 के दिन नेताजी कहाँ लापता हो गए और उनका आगे क्या हुआ, यह भारत के इतिहास का सबसे बडा अनुत्तरित रहस्य बन गया हैं।
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