Satyendranath Bose, known globally as Satyen Bose or S. N. Bose, dedicated twenty four of his prime productive years to the University of Dhaka, making groundbreaking contributions to the field of physics. He joined the university in 1921, the year it was founded, under the visionary leaderships of the then Vice-Chancellor, P. J. Hartog, and the then head of the Department of Physics, Walter Allen Jenkins, who recognized his immense potential in his promising work titled On the Deduction of Rydberg’s Law from the Quantum Theory of Spectral Emission published in the Philosophical Magazine journal in 1920.

Bose’s seminal article, Planck’s Law and the Light-Quantum Hypothesis, was initially submitted to the Philosophical Magazine, but was outrightly rejected by the editorial desk without even being sent to the reviewer(s).  Bose wrote to Einstein in desperation, and requested him to translate the article into German and then arrange its publication in the Zeitschrift für Physik journal. Einstein rightfully recognized the significance of the article and did the needful to get it published. This publication in the year 1924 thus marked the birth of quantum statistics (Bose-Einstein statistics) and established University of Dhaka as its birthplace.

This year we joyfully commemorate the 100th anniversary of quantum statistics with a four-day conference, taking place on 7-10 November, featuring esteemed scholars from all over the world.