Today I learned that S. N. Bose and Meghnad Saha were the first to translate Einstein's papers from German to English.
From the article -
A momentous event in physics occurred following the total solar eclipse of May 29, 1919, when Arthur Eddington observed the deflection of starlight passing near the sun. His observations vindicated Einstein’s prediction for the gravitational bending of light. After this event, Bose and Saha translated all of Einstein’s and Hermann Minkowski’s papers from German into English. These were published by the University of Calcutta in 1920 in a volume entitled The Principle of Relativity, with an introduction by Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, a friend of Bose and Saha who would go on to become a pioneer in statistics in India. These were the first translations of Einstein’s papers into English.
Fascinating biographical article of Satyendra Nath Bose and his early contributions to quantum mechanics. Always love to hear stories behind great scientists / scientific discoveries.
In particular, one thing I learned is that Bose postulated the idea of spin, maybe even before Pauli. Quite impressive!
From the article -
A momentous event in physics occurred following the total solar eclipse of May 29, 1919, when Arthur Eddington observed the deflection of starlight passing near the sun. His observations vindicated Einstein’s prediction for the gravitational bending of light. After this event, Bose and Saha translated all of Einstein’s and Hermann Minkowski’s papers from German into English. These were published by the University of Calcutta in 1920 in a volume entitled The Principle of Relativity, with an introduction by Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, a friend of Bose and Saha who would go on to become a pioneer in statistics in India. These were the first translations of Einstein’s papers into English.