Satyendra Nath Bose

Satyendra Nath Bose /sɐθ.jin.ðrɐ nɑθ bos/ (Bengali: ????????? ??? ????) (January 1, 1894 – February 4, 1974) was an Indian physicist specializing in mathematical physics.

The error that wasn't

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There are three outcomes. What is the probability of producing two heads?

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While at University of Dhaka, Bose wrote a short article called Planck's Law and the Hypothesis of Light Quanta, describing the photoelectric effect and based on a lecture he had given on the ultraviolet catastrophe. During this lecture, in which he had intended to show his students that theory predicted results not in accordance with experimental results, Bose made an embarrassing statistical error which gave a prediction that agreed with observations, a contradiction.

Related Topics:
University of Dhaka - Photoelectric effect - Ultraviolet catastrophe

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Since the coins are distinct, there are two outcomes which produce a head and a tail. The probability of two heads is one-fourth.

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The error was a simple mistake that would appear obviously wrong to anyone with a basic understanding of statistics, and similar to arguing that flipping two fair coins will produce two heads one-third of the time. However, it produced correct results, and Bose realized it might not be a mistake at all.

Related Topics:
Statistics - Fair coin

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Physics journals refused to publish Bose's paper. It was their contention that he had presented to them a simple mistake, and Bose's findings were ignored. Discouraged, he wrote to Albert Einstein, who immediately agreed with him. Physicists stopped laughing when Einstein sent Zeitschrift für Physik his own paper to accompany Bose's, which were published in 1924. Bose had earlier translated Einstein's theory of General Relativity from German to English.

Related Topics:
Physics journal - Albert Einstein - Physicist - Zeitschrift für Physik - 1924 - General Relativity - German - English

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Because photons are indistinguishable from each other, one cannot treat any two photons having equal energy as being different from each other. By analogy, if the coins in the above example behaved like photons and other bosons, the probability of producing two heads would indeed be one-third. Bose's "error" is now called Bose-Einstein statistics.

Related Topics:
Boson - Bose-Einstein statistics

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Einstein adopted the idea and extended it to atoms. From this, he predicted the existence of phenomena which became known as Bose-Einstein condensate, a dense collection of bosons (which are particles with integer spin, named after Bose), which was proven to exist by experiment in 1995.

Related Topics:
Bose-Einstein condensate - Boson - Spin - 1995

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