Monday, September 18, 2006

S.N.Bose on popular science in vernacular

From http://www.vigyanprasar.gov.in/scientists/snbose/bosenew.htm
"Bose was a great populariser of science. He strongly felt that it was duty to present science to the common man in his own language. For popularizing science Bose wrote in Bengali. This is the reason why his contribution in popularizing science is not known outside Bengal. It were largely Bose’s efforts which led to the establishment of the Bangiya Bijnan Parishad (Science Association of Bengal), a registered society with the sole objective of promoting and popularizing science through the vernacular. The Parishad was formally inaugurated on January 25, 1948. The circular announcing the formation of the Parishad stated: “We need science at every step, but our system of education does not prepare us for it, so that we are not able to utilize science in our everyday life. The main obstacle so far was a foreign language through which education was being imparted. Today the ties have changed. New hopes and aspiration are emerging. Now it is the duty and the responsibility of our scientists to popularize science through the medium of vernacular and thus help to create a healthy scientific attitude among the people. As a first step to this effort it has been resolved to form a `Bangiya Bijnan Parishad’. It was mainly through the inspired leadership of Professor Satyendranath Bose.” The Parishad started a monthly magazine on popular science in Bengali, Jnan O Bijnan (Knowledge and Science). As part of his attempt in popularizing science through the vernacular Bose even started teaching Relativity to post-graduate students in colloquial Bengali."
( I omitted a bit from the quotation which seemed to be a repetetion).

1 comment:

Fal Sarkar said...

Hi! If you are interested in SN Bose, you might want to visit the S N Bose Project website (http://www.snbose.org) or the S N Bose Blog (http://blog.snbose.org).

Thanks for sharing your post!