"I should imagine that the sciences were much more antient in the Indies", wrote Voltaire. There are three areas in which India has made significant contributions: astronomy, mathematics and medicine.

Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858-1937) studied at St Xavier’s Jesuit College in Calcutta before moving on to the University of London and then Cambridge, where he was fortunate enough to study under the likes of Lord Rayleigh and Francis Darwin. A professor at Presidency College in Calcutta, he invented a radio wave coherer and, in 1895, two years before Marconi, was the first to demonstrate wireless radio transmission. The physicist Neville Mott believed he was sixty years ahead of his time.

Prafulla Chandra Ray (1861-1944) came from a wealthy family in East Bengal who had embraced the reformist ideas of the Brahmo Samaj. He developed a passion for Bengali literature, history and languages from an early age, studying Sanskrit, Greek, Latin and French. His Professor of English literature at the Metropolitan Institution, which he joined in 1878, was the great nationalist leader Surendranath Banerjee, and it was Banerjee who convinced him that India’s future depended on the quality of its scientific research.