The Making of Modern Physics in Colonial India

How did modern physics establish itself in India—a British colony—in the early 20th century? Who were the key actors and why did they develop physics in a colonized country far away from a European metropole? By using the case studies of Jagadish Chandra Bose, Satyendranath Bose and Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, this talk will explore their physics, nationalism and social identity as "well-mannered intelligentsia" who played a key role in the making of modern physics in a country still under colonial domination. Finally, it will be argued how the local and the global were entangled in the worldview of these colonial intellectuals and the correlations between the discontinuous ‘light quantum’ and Indian history that played a key role in the ushering in of modern Indian physics.