The Maverick Who Made an Error

Let's think about flipping two identical coins. If we denote the head by H and the tail by T, then there are four possible outcomes: HH, HT, TH and TT. so one would get two heads 1/4 of the total times one flips two coins.

So far so good! But this is not at what a young Physics Professor at Dacca University arrived. He claimed that the HH combination will happen 1/3 times. ( Of course, he was not flipping coins, but was working on something much more important: namely, Planck's Law and the Hypothesis of Light Quanta, Photoelectric Effect and Ultraviolet Catastrophe. But that's beside the point).

Obviously, he made a mistake. But the surprising thing was that his theory gave a prediction that agreed with observations, and that was a contradiction. And our professor realized that it might not be a mistake at all. As expected, Physics journals refused to publish his paper, and in desperation, he wrote a very well-known physicist, who agreed with the results, and even wrote a paper as a follow-up.

This work gave rise to a totally new statistic in Physics, known as the Bose-Einstein Statistics, his name being Satyendra Nath Bose. Physicists later named a group of particles inclinf photons, the particles that carry light energy, as Bosons in Bose's honor. In spite of his not having a doctorate then, he was made a professor in 1926 with Einstein's recommendations.

Bose was arguably the best theoretical physicist India ever produced. The most interesting aspect of his personality was his simplicity and down-to-earth nature. He loved to chat for hours with friends and students and everybody had free access to his desk. Thus many people believe that he never fully utilized his capabilities. He also realized the importance of popularization of science and actively urged the writing of science articles in Indian languages.

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http://www.4to40.com/legends/index.asp?article=legends_snbose
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Bose.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyendra_Nath_Bose
http://www.calcuttaweb.com/people/snbose.shtml