From semi-conductors to the rhythms of sensitive plants: the research of J.C. Bose

Abstract

J.C. Bose (1858-1937) was one of the world's first biophysicists. He was the first person to use a semi conducting crystal to detect radio waves, and the ingenious inventor of a portable apparatus for generating and detecting microwaves (approximately 1 cm to 5 mm radio waves, frequency 12-60 GHz), as well as inventing many instruments now routinely used in microwave technology. Bose extended his specialist knowledge of the physics of electromagnetic radiation into insightful experiments on the life-processes of plants. He became a controversial figure in the west. He invented unique, delicate instruments for simultaneously measuring bioelectric potentials and for quantifying very small movements in plants. He worked with touch-sensitive plants, including Mimosa pudica, with plants that perform spontaneous movements, including the Indian telegraph plant Desmodium, and with plants and trees that did not make obvious rapid movements. Bose concluded that plants and animals have essentially the same fundamental physiological mechanisms. All plants co-ordinate their movements and responses to the environment through electrical signalling. All plants are sensitive explorers of their world, responding to it through a fundamental, pulsatile, motif involving coupled oscillations in electric potential, turgor pressure, contractility, and growth. His overall conclusion that plants have an electromechanical pulse, a nervous system, a form of intelligence, and are capable of remembering and learning, was not well received in its time. A hundred years later, concepts of plant intelligence, learning, and long-distance electrical signalling in plants have entered the mainstream literature.