The Government of India showed its appreciation of his work by deputing
him to Europe to place the results of his investigations before the
learned Scientific Bodies. He remained on his Deputation from the 22nd
July 1896 to the 19th April 1897. He read a paper 'On a complete
Apparatus for studying the Properties of Electric Waves' at the meeting
of British Association, held at Liverpool, in 1896. He then communicated
a paper 'On the Selective Conductivity exhibited by Polarising
Substances,' which was published by the Royal Society, in January 1897.
He next delivered his 'Friday Evening Discourse,' at the Royal
Institution, 'On Electric Waves,' on the 29th January 1897. "There is,
however, to our thinking" wrote the _Spectator_ at the time "something
of rare interest in the spectacle presented of a Bengalee of the purest
descent possible, lecturing in London to an audience of appreciative
European savants upon one of the most recondite branches of the modern
physical science." He was then invited to address the Scientific
Societies in Paris. "Prof. J. C. Bose" wrote the Review Encyclopedique,
Paris "exhibited on the 9th of March before the Sorbonne, an apparatus
of his invention for demonstrating the laws of reflection, refraction,
and polarisation of electric waves. He repeated his experiments on the
22nd, before a large number of members of the Academie des Sciences,
among whom were Poincare, Cornu, Mascart, Lipmann, Cailletet, Becquerel
and others. These savants highly applauded the investigations of the
Indian Professor." M. Cornu, President of the Academy of Science, was
pleased to address Professor Bose as follows:--
"By your discoveries you have greatly furthered the cause of Science.
You must try to revive the grand traditions of your race which bore
aloft the torch light of art and science and was the leader of
civilization two thousand years ago. We, in France applaud you." This
fervent appeal, we shall see, as we proceed, did not go in vain.
He was next invited to lecture before the Universities in Germany. At
Berlin, before the leading physicists of Germany, he gave an address on
Electric Radiation, which was subsequently published in the
_Physikaliscen Gesellschaft Berlin_, in April 1897.