Bose and His Statistics

by G. Venkataraman

123 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1992

Reviews

[Bojan Tunguz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Satyendranath Bose is not exactly a household name in scientific circles, not even among those who are very familiar with the theories of elementary particles. This is rather remarkable, since one of the two classes of elementary particles - bosons - is named in his honor. The two classes are derived from the two basic statistics that the elementary particles can obey - either Fermi-Dirac or Bose-Einstein. This much is well known to all physics students and others who have taken time to study some of the discoveries of modern physics. And yet, of the four names that those two statistics are named after only that of Bose is not widely known. This remarkable little book goes a long way in righting that historic wrong. It describes both Bose the man, giving many details of his life, and the theory behind the physics that he worked on. The level of physics understanding required to read this book with comprehension is moderate, and a couple of years of college level physics would be an optimal background for the full understanding of this book. On the other hand if such level of education is not present, this book may be a good motivator for anyone for further reading in physics.

The book is written with the Indian audience in mind, but it is accessible to anyone with broader interest in Physics. It was published in 1992 and several major experimental developments concerning Bose gases have occurred since. Nevertheless, the topics covered in the book are fairly comprehensive and make up one self-contained whole.

[Riddhiman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book as a student of class 10, owing to my immense interest in physics. G. Venkataraman explains the concepts in a lucid way, but the thing I liked most about his books is that he did not omit the mathematical parts. That was really a lure for me.

In this book, Venkataraman narrates the life and work of Satyendranath Bose, his innovative derivation of Plank's equation (even better than Plank himself) which opened new avenues in the field of quantum mechanics - namely the Bose-Einstein statistics, his interactions with Einstein and his obsession in later life to promote the study of sciences in Bengali; but strangely omits references to his marriage. Satyen Bose's name has been immortalized now through the sub atomic particle 'Boson' and it is unfortunate that he did not receive a nobel prize. He truly deserved it.

[Swagatam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Combining my early interests in quantum physics and recently engendered feelings for computing research, I picked this one which I bought in 2016 but had to leave because of a lack of necessary background. Now with some understanding of quantum mechanics and probability distributions, I have started to read this book from the Vignettes in Physics series again! It's nice how it beautifully portrays the detailed pathway which led Satyendranath Bose to an alternate derivation of Planck's formula (for black body radiation) which, as the author said, laid foundations for quantum statistical mechanics even before quantum mechanics was born! (Page 50).

This text also cleared some of my basic doubts on what some of the physics jargon meant in simple terms. As examples-

Statistical mechanics: It is a subject which deals with heat in terms of atoms and their motion. The term statistics comes in as the nature of occupying/ filling the energy levels by those atoms is essentially a distribution (of atoms in different levels). Different particles follow different distributions (FD, BE, or classical Boltzmann) based on indistinguishability, spin, and other factors. The pdfs of those distributions have equations involving exp all over them but they look quite similar with long tails! (Page 22).

Quantum field theory: It provides explanations for how particles like photons are created and how they vanish/ get annihilated (maybe after absorption). Its outcome was QED which describes all phenomena involving light and atoms like Compton and Raman scattering, emission/ absorption of light from atoms, etc. Feynman refers to it as the best theory we have in Physics! (Page 100).

Practical evidence of particles following Bose statistics: Condensation and superfluidity of helium (spin-zero, interacting bose gas!). (Page 111)

Still, after reading the book, the concept of spin along with many other things were not clear to me! Hopefully, some other book will elucidate it to me someday.

[Lalit Singh Tomar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not that simple to understand ..

[Beeraiah Thonti · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's good introductory book for who would like to know about condensed matter physics and work of S N Bose