The Underestimated Minds.

There has always been some people whose mind were ahead of time and we spend our whole life thinking them useless, whereas future find them as the designer of the era. Here in this article there are stories of some such minds that were underestimated, some because of their staying ahead of time, discrimination, politics, degree like many factors.

Satyendra Nath Bose: 

1^st January 1894, Kolkata, India a mighty was born. Considered as one of the greatest physicist and mathematician of India and is well known for specializing theoretical physics.

His work on quantum mechanics and especially on quantum statistics made him well known across the world. His papers on application of quantum statistics on photons in 1924 was written from University of Dhaka (in present day Bangladesh) by deriving Plank’s quantum radiation law without applying classical physics by using novel way of counting states with identical particles was not initially accepted for publication. Later, Einstein recognized it’s significance and translated it in German and sent for publication to “Zeitschrift für Physik”. Then after, he became a well known face in quantum mechanics. Paul Dirac later named particles with whole number spin as ‘Boson’ in his honor. Despite of being such a genius, a polyglot (knowing Bengali, English, French, German and Sanskrit), a topper throughout educational career and a member of parliament of Rajya Sabha, India he faced a lot of ignorance starting from his field of research to his fellowship amount by govt. to staying as Reader instead of professor in universities, he never received an international award although he was a Fellow of Royal Society. When a letter by Kedareswar Banerjee, HOD, Physics, Allahabad University on 12^th January, 1956 was written to Nobel Committee as : “(1). He (Bose) made very outstanding contributions to Physics by developing the statistics known after his name as Bose statistics. In recent years this statistics is found to be of profound importance in the classifications of fundamental particles and has contributed immensely in the development of nuclear physics. (2). During the period from 1953 to date he has made a number of highly interesting contributions of far-reaching consequences on the subject of Einstein’s Unitary Field Theory”. Oskar Klein denied this saying it not worthy.

Jules Henri Poincaré:  

29^th April 1854, Cité Ducale neighborhood, Nancy, Meurthe-et-Moselle, France, a last polymath was born. Mathematicians call him “the last universalist”. He founded subject like topology and laid the base for chaos theory. He was the 1^st person to propose gravitational wave, whose proof came a century later at 2016 from two colliding supermassive blackholes 9.3 billion light years away. He set the famous Poincaré group (a famous unsolved problem in math until 2002-2002 by Grigori Perelman). He is the 1^st person to study differential equation on general geometric properties and realized these as model of the behavior of multiple bodies in free motion within the solar system and it is considered as first big achievement in celestial mechanics since Isaac Newton. He graduated from University of Paris in 1879 and the same year in December joined University of Cean as junior lecturer. Known for creation of a new branch of mathematics called “qualitative theory of differential equation”.  He showed how it is possible to derive the most important information about the behavior of a family of solutions without having to solve the equation (since this may not always be possible). He successfully used this approach to problems in celestial mechanics and mathematical physics. Only at the age of 32 got elected to the French Academy of Science. 1^st believed mass energy relationship then after facing a huge number of problems and wrong approach later rejected it later in speech in University of Paris. Einstein and Poincaré are known to develop the theory of relativity, Einstein’s paper on relativity was published three months later the publication of Poincaré’s short paper, but, unfortunately he didn’t get as much recognition maybe because of his explanation, which was a bit tilted toward mathematics. Einstein addressed him as the pioneer of relativity. Despite of his unforgettable contribution to mathematics and physics and astronomy and special theory of relativity he was never accepted as a nominee by the Nobel committee just because they are not interested in theory, some other professors and colleagues of Poincaré used to write to the Nobel committee to introduce Nobel in theoretical achievements also but they failed continuously.    

Subhash Mukhopadhyay:

16^th January, 1931Hazaribagh, Bihar and Orissa Province, British India (now in Jharkhand, India), the man was born who created the world's second and India's first child using in-vitro fertilization .

Kanupriya Agarwal (Durga), who was born in 1978, just 67 days after the first IVF baby in United Kingdom beating all the lackness of resource and all other stuffs like facilitative labs in a convenient and with great efficiency in his own home. His methodology were not allowed to be shared with the scientist community across the world by then Govt. of West Bengal and then Govt. of India causing him nothing but humiliation, insult and ignorance. Those humiliation, ignorance and insults later pushed him to take the path of suicide. In his suicide note he had written “I can't wait everyday for a heart attack to kill me.” Later after some years his recognition is attributable to T. C. Anand Kumar who is credited to be the mastermind behind India's second (officially the first) test-tube baby. Later, T. C. Anand Kumar read and researched the diary of his predecessor and credited him posthumously.

Nikola Tesla: 

10^th July 1856, Austrian Empire, the designer of the 20^th and 21^st century, the child of darkness (nicknamed by a nurse as he born in a stormy night (source: Facebook)) and a genius inventor was born. Without any single piece of degree he designed two centuries (at least) with his inventions that include AC, Telephony, Turbine, Electric motors, Tesla coil, polyphase AC and some mind-storming ideas including worldwide wireless power-supply and wireless lighting on which he worked (in New York and Colorado spring). He succeeded to varying extent in bringing his mind-storming ideas into reality with his unfinished Wardenclyffe Tower project, when he ran out of budget and had to terminate the project without completing it. He was always ahead of his time, which caused him a lot of humiliation. Despite of designing two whole centuries he never gets appreciated, instead he got humiliated and ignored. When he improved the design of arc lighting for Edison’s company, it was ignored. When he wanted to strengthen U. S. military by selling them remote control, he got ignored. And furthermore, his dream project the Wardenclyffe Tower was demolished to satisfy his debts and he could not do anything about that. Keep all the awards apart (he never got one) he never get any appreciation, only thing he got from people and country is humiliation. In his last letter to his mother he has written “I wish I could be beside you now mother, to bring the glass of water. All these years I have spent in the service of mankind brought me nothing but insults and humiliations. ”

Dilip Mahalanabis:

 12^th November 1934, the savior of around 70 million lives (highest after vaccines and antibiotics in the field of medicine.) was born. Along with Dr. Richard Cash and Dr. David Nalin formulated the oral rehydration salt, which is known for it’s simplicity and effectiveness across the globe.

When their finding was published on The Lancet, they said it “Potentially the most important medical advance of this century.” Despite, of saving such a great number of lives they are not yet recognized by the Nobel Committee, maybe because of it’s simplicity. Jeremy Laurance, a British journalist commented on its simplicity as “Which medicine has saved more lives than any other and can be made by anyone in their kitchen, back bedroom, shantytown hut or dwelling built of sticks – as long as they have access to clean water? The answer is: eight teaspoons of sugar, half a teaspoon of salt and one liter of water. Mix. Drink……It requires no specialized equipment; uses ingredients that are ubiquitous and have a long shelf life; has few side effects; and can be made up in any quantity – the prefect medicine.” UNICEF in 1987 recognized it as most life saving medicine over that short term saying “No other single medical breakthrough of the 20th century has had the potential to prevent so many deaths over such a short period of time and at so little cost.” Their work in 1971, Bangladesh in controlling cholera outbreak, that caused 7 documented pandemics in just 200 years was significant enough to be honored on the stage of the world, they deserved it.

Jagadish Chandra Bose: 

30^th November 1858, Bikrampur, Bengal Presidency, British India (now Munsiganj, Bangladesh), they man who connected the whole world was born. In 1894, Kolkata, British colonized India, demonstration of wireless transmission was performed by Jagadish Chandra Bose, a year before it’s demonstration by Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi (the first wireless transmission).Bose was also a well-known figure in the fields of biology, botany and literature (sci-fi). Despite of being such a talented person and introducer of modern communication system, he never received an award and he also was devoid of recognition. Later, in 2004 a BBC poll Bose was voted seventh greatest Bengali of all the time.  

Benjamin Bradley:

 March 1836, Anne Arundel County, Maryland, born a slave, learning things from his master’s children

 Only at the age of 16 he made a steam engine out of a gun barrel, pewter, round steel, and various other materials. Professor Hopkins of U. S. Naval Academy wrote about him as “he looks for the law by which things act.” Without any single piece of degree he built a steam engine large enough to run the first “cutter of sloop-of-war” that could exceed up to 16 knots an hour and later by selling it to one of his classmates developed the “first steam-powered warship.” Despite of such great skill he was never allowed to patent his inventions and developments just because he was a slave. Such a great advancement in steam engine was never accredited to the real inventor just because he was a slave. It is a perfect example of caste based choking of talent.  

Ibn al-Haytham: 

c. 965, Basra, Buyid Emirates, born the father of modern optics famously known as Alhazan. Was one of the prominent scholars of Islamic Golden age. A prominent scholar in Arab mathematics, astronomy, and physics he also contributed to toward the development of philosophy, theology and medicine in a word he was a polymath. He was the first to describe that vision is a result of occurrence of reflection on an object and passage of that reflected light straight into our eyes and was the first to say that vision occurs at brain and not on eyes. Instead of such great advancement to optics he is merely described in any school book on optics. Nicknamed the “second Ptolemy”, was his only award on his life.   

Esther Lederberg:

 18^th December, Bronx, New York, born the pioneer of bacterial genetics.

She discovered the bacterial virus λ-bacteriophage, bacterial fertility factor-F, replica plating, plasmid reference centre and many more which acted as key for development of Genetic Engineering. Despite her relentless effort in advancing genetics she faced a lot of problem just because she was a woman. She was excluded from writing chapters in a book, she continuously struggled for professional recognition. Her husband, Joshua was a serious problem to her, who also was a microbiologist, Joshua (Nobel Laureate) was often accredited for the discoveries and idea of her. National geographic said Esther Lederberg might have been known as the mother of microbiology – if not for her inconvenient husband, Joshua.

“Those we underestimate in life can often serve as guides to our lack of vision.”
― Stewart Stafford