The history of 20th-century physics is usually told from a Western perspective, but anyone familiar with Bose–Einstein statistics, the Raman effect, or the Saha ionization equation is at least implicitly aware that it was not exclusively Euro-American. In The Making of Modern Physics in Colonial India, Somaditya Banerjee, a historian of science at Austin Peay State University, examines the lives of the three Indian physicists who gave their names to those discoveries: Satyendra Nath Bose, Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, and Meghnad Saha.

Serving as a corrective to the standard Eurocentric story, Banerjee’s book demonstrates that the three scientists not only laid the foundation for modern physics in India but also earned international renown for their significant contributions to the then-emerging field of quantum physics. Indeed, despite their location on the scientific periphery, Bose, Raman, and Saha engaged with the leading scientists of their time, most of whom were based in Europe or the US. But their international outlook never blinded the three to political struggles at home, which drove them to use science as a weapon in the nationalist fight against colonialism.

Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman (second from right), with Niels Bohr (third from left), George Gamow (far left), and others at Bohr’s institute in Copenhagen, likely sometime in the 1930s.

Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman (second from right), with Niels Bohr (third from left), George Gamow (far left), and others at Bohr’s institute in Copenhagen, likely sometime in the 1930s.

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Bose, for example, opposed the Raj and wanted to avoid associating with it as much as possible. That anticolonial sentiment is part of why he chose to correspond with Albert Einstein—a foreign scientist who was not a subject of the British Empire—even though British scientists and administrators supported Bose’s work.

Raman had a robust network of international correspondents, although he remained very much rooted in his land and culture. Like Bose, he was close to many leading non-British scientists, including Niels Bohr, Arnold Sommerfeld, and Max Born. At a time when it was unheard of for a non-Western scientist to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics, he was repeatedly nominated for the award by some of the most important scientists of his time, including Bohr, Ernest Rutherford, and Charles Thomson Rees Wilson. Thanks in part to his network of international scientific connections, Raman eventually received the prize in 1930—the first time it was awarded to a physicist from the non-Western world.

Saha, the third scientist discussed in the book, differed from Bose and Raman in that he came from a lower-caste background; unlike his upper-caste compatriots, he had to deal with everyday discrimination and inequality. Banerjee argues, however, that Saha was accepted alongside Bose and Raman as a bhadralok—a member of the educated upper elite in Bengali society—because he excelled in his studies, went to the best educational institutions, and worked with some of the top professors of his day.

Given their backgrounds, neither the lower-caste Saha nor Raman, whose Tamil Brahmin upbringing provided him with cultural and caste privileges, would seem to fall into the bhadralok category. Nevertheless, Banerjee attempts to show that the bhadralok identity was not tied to geographic origin and caste background but instead linked with education level, intellectual pursuits, and the choice of a modern profession. He argues that a distinct practice of bhadralok physics emerged in early-20th-century India—one embodied by Bose, Raman, and Saha.

Although The Making of Modern Physics in Colonial India is about three leading Indian physicists, it serves as an invitation for scholars to examine other non-Western scientists who did important work under colonial rule but often remain overlooked in traditional narratives. It also urges historians to transcend the binary of the West and the East and to analyze multiple geographic contexts and individuals in their work. Banerjee’s book will be of interest not only to historians and anthropologists of science but also to scientists who want to go beyond Western narratives of quantum physics and related fields.

Renny Thomas is an anthropologist of science who teaches in the department of humanities and social sciences at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Bhopal in India.