Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose,[1] CSI,[2] CIE,[3] FRS[4] (/boʊs/;[5] Bengali pronunciation: [dʒɔgod̪iʃ

tʃɔnd̪ro bosu]; 30 November 1858 – 23 November 1937) was a polymath, physicist, biologist,
biophysicist, botanist and archaeologist, as well as an early writer of science fiction.[6] Living
in British controlled India, he pioneered the investigation of radio and microwave optics,
made very significant contributions to plant science, and laid the foundations of experimental
science in the Indian subcontinent.[7] IEEE named him one of the fathers of radio science.[8]
He is considered the father of Bengali science fiction. He also invented the crescograph. A
crater on the moon has been named in his honour.[9]

Born in Mymensingh, Bengal Presidency during the British Raj,[10] Bose graduated from St.
Xavier's College, Calcutta. He then went to the University of London to study medicine, but
could not pursue studies in medicine because of health problems. Instead, he conducted his
research with the Nobel Laureate Lord Rayleigh at Cambridge and returned to India. He then
joined the Presidency College of University of Calcutta as a Professor of Physics. There,
despite racial discrimination and a lack of funding and equipment, Bose carried on his
scientific research. He made remarkable progress in his research of remote wireless signalling
and was the first to use semiconductor junctions to detect radio signals. However, instead of
trying to gain commercial benefit from this invention, Bose made his inventions public in
order to allow others to further develop his research.

Bose subsequently made a number of pioneering discoveries in plant physiology. He used his
own invention, the crescograph, to measure plant response to various stimuli, and thereby
scientifically proved parallelism between animal and plant tissues. Although Bose filed for a
patent for one of his inventions because of peer pressure, his reluctance to any form of
patenting was well known. To facilitate his research, he constructed automatic recorders
capable of registering extremely slight movements; these instruments produced some striking
results, such as Bose's demonstration of an apparent power of feeling in plants, exemplified
by the quivering of injured plants. His books include Response in the Living and Non-Living
(1902) and The Nervous Mechanism of Plants (1926).
Jawaharlal Nehru (/ˈneɪruː, ˈnɛruː/;[1] Hindustani: [ˈdʒəʋaːɦərˈlaːl ˈneːɦru] ( listen); 14
November 1889 – 27 May 1964) was the first Prime Minister of India and a central figure in
Indian politics before and after independence. He emerged as the paramount leader of the
Indian independence movement under the tutelage of Mahatma Gandhi and ruled India from
its establishment as an independent nation in 1947 until his death in 1964. He is considered to
be the architect of the modern Indian nation-state: a sovereign, socialist, secular, and
democratic republic. He was also known as Pandit Nehru due to his roots with Kashmiri
Pandit community while many Indian children knew him as "Uncle Nehru" (Chacha
Nehru).[2][3]

The son of Motilal Nehru, a prominent lawyer and nationalist statesman and Swaroop Rani,
Nehru was a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge and the Inner Temple, where he trained
to be a barrister. Upon his return to India, he enrolled at the Allahabad High Court, and took
an interest in national politics, which eventually replaced his legal practice. A committed
nationalist since his teenage years, he became a rising figure in Indian politics during the
upheavals of the 1910s. He became the prominent leader of the left-wing factions of the
Indian National Congress during the 1920s, and eventually of the entire Congress, with the
tacit approval of his mentor, Gandhi. As Congress President in 1929, Nehru called for
complete independence from the British Raj and instigated the Congress's decisive shift
towards the left.

Nehru and the Congress dominated Indian politics during the 1930s as the country moved
towards independence. His idea of a secular nation-state was seemingly validated when the
Congress, under his leadership, swept the 1937 provincial elections and formed the
government in several provinces; on the other hand, the separatist Muslim League fared much
poorer. But these achievements were seriously compromised in the aftermath of the Quit
India Movement in 1942, which saw the British effectively crush the Congress as a political
organisation. Nehru, who had reluctantly heeded Gandhi's call for immediate independence,
for he had desired to support the Allied war effort during the Second World War, came out of
a lengthy prison term to a much altered political landscape. The Muslim League under his old
Congress colleague and now bête noire, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, had come to dominate
Muslim politics in India. Negotiations between Nehru and Jinnah for power sharing failed
and gave way to the independence and bloody partition of India in 1947.

Nehru was elected by the Congress to assume office as independent India's first Prime
Minister, although the question of leadership had been settled as far back as 1941, when
Gandhi acknowledged Nehru as his political heir and successor. As Prime Minister, he set out
to realise his vision of India. The Constitution of India was enacted in 1950, after which he
embarked on an ambitious program of economic, social and political reforms. Chiefly, he
oversaw India's transition from a colony to a republic, while nurturing a plural, multi-party
democracy. In foreign policy, he took a leading role in Non-Alignment while projecting India
as a regional hegemon in South Asia.

Under Nehru's leadership, the Congress emerged as a catch-all party, dominating national and
state-level politics and winning consecutive elections in 1951, 1957, and 1962. He remained
popular with the people of India in spite of political troubles in his final years and failure of
leadership during the 1962 Sino-Indian War. In India, his birthday is celebrated as Children's
Day.
Alfred George Gardiner (1865–1946) was a British journalist and author. His essays,
written under the pen-name Alpha of the Plough, are highly regarded.[1] He was also
Chairman of the National Anti-Sweating League, an advocacy group which campaigned for a
minimum wage in industry.[2]

Early life
Gardiner was born in Chelmsford, the son of a cabinet-maker and alcoholic. As a boy he
worked at the Chelmsford Chronicle and the Bournemouth Directory. He joined the Northern
Daily Telegraph in 1887 which had been founded the year before by Thomas Purvis Ritzema.
In 1899, he was appointed editor of the Blackburn Weekly Telegraph.[3]

Editor of the Daily News

In 1902 Ritzema was named general manager of the Daily News. Needing an editor, he
turned to his young protégé to fill the role. The choice soon proved a great success; under
Gardiner's direction, it became one of the leading liberal journals its day, as he improved its
coverage of both the news and literary matters while crusading against social injustices. Yet
while circulation rose from 80,000 when he joined the paper to 151,000 in 1907 and 400,000
with the introduction of a Manchester edition in 1909, the paper continued to run at a loss.

Though close to the owner of the Daily News, George Cadbury, Gardiner resigned in 1919
over a disagreement with him over Gardiner's opposition to David Lloyd George.[3]

Essayist
From 1915 he contributed to The Star under the pseudonym Alpha of the Plough.[3] At the
time The Star had several anonymous essayists whose pseudonyms were the names of stars.
Invited to choose the name of a star as a pseudonym he chose the name of the brightest
(alpha) star in the constellation "the Plough." His essays are uniformly elegant, graceful and
humorous. His uniqueness lay in his ability to teach the basic truths of life in an easy and
amusing manner. Pillars of Society, Pebbles on the Shore, Many Furrows and Leaves in the
Wind are some of his best known writings.

The end of the essay "The Vanity of Old Age" is typically neat: "For Nature is a cunning
nurse. She gives us lollipops all the way, and when the lollipop of hope and the lollipop of
achievement are done, she gently inserts in our toothless gums the lollipop of remembrance.
And with that pleasant vanity we are soothed to sleep."[4]

Works
 Prophets, Priests and Kings (1908)
 Pillars of Society (1913)
 The War Lords (1915)
 Pebbles on the Shore (writing as "Alpha of the Plough") (1916) ( A later edition,
released in 1927 by J. M. Dent, was illustrated by renowned artist, Charles E. Brock.)
 Windfalls (as "Alpha of the Plough") (1920)
 Leaves in the Wind (as "Alpha of the Plough") (1920)
Sarojini Naidu (born as Sarojini Chattopadhyay) also known by the sobriquet as The
Nightingale of India,[2] was an Indian independence activist and poet. Naidu served as the
first governor of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh from 1947 to 1949;[3] the first
woman to become the governor of an Indian state.[4] She was the second woman to become
the president of the Indian National Congress in 1925 and the first Indian woman to do so.[5][6

Early life
Sarojini Naidu was born in Hyderabad to Aghore Nath Chattopadhyay and Barada Sundari
Devi on 13 February 1879. Her parental home was at Brahmangaon in Bikrampur (in present-
day Bangladesh).[7] Her father, Aghornath Chattopadhyaya, with a doctorate of Science from
Edinburgh University, settled in Hyderabad, where he founded and administered Hyderabad
College, which later became the Nizam's College in Hyderabad. Her mother, Barada Sundari
Devi, was a poetess and used to write poetry in Bengali.

She was the eldest among the eight siblings. Her brother Virendranath Chattopadhyaya was a
revolutionary and her other brother, Harindranath was a poet, a dramatist, and an actor.[8]

Naidu, having passed her matriculation examination from the University of Madras, took a
four-year break from her studies. In 1895, the Nizam Scholarship Trust founded by the 6th
Nizam, Mir Mahbub Ali Khan, gave her the chance to study in England, first at King's
College London and later at Girton College, Cambridge.

Political career
Naidu joined the Indian national movement in the wake of partition of Bengal in 1905. She
came into contact with Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Rabindranath Tagore, Muhammad Ali
Jinnah, Annie Besant, C. P. Ramaswami Iyer, Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru.[citation
needed]

During 1915–1918, she travelled to different regions in India delivering lectures on social
welfare, women's empowerment and nationalism. She also helped to establish the Women's
Indian Association (WIA) in 1917.[9] She was sent to London along with Annie Besant,
President of WIA, to present the case for the women's vote to the Joint Select Committee.

Congress party president

In 1925, Naidu presided over the annual session of Indian National Congress at Cawnpore
(now Kanpur).

In 1929, she presided over East African Indian Congress in South Africa. She was awarded
the Kaisar-i-Hind Medal by the British government for her work during the plague epidemic
in India.[10]

In 1930 during the salt satyagraha, she was one of the women protesters at the Dharsana salt
works, Gujrat. Hundreds of satyagrahis were beaten by soldiers under British command at
Dharasana. The ensuing publicity attracted world attention to the Indian independence
movement and brought into question the legitimacy of British rule in India.