20th Anniversary Supplements Archive

Forty years of science

Dr. Mohammad Ali Asgar

Photo: Adam Gault

THE four decades from 1971 to 2010 is a strategic period for reflecting on the progress of science in Bangladesh, because this comprises the cardinal phenomenon of the country's earning independence through a long struggle and bloody war of freedom, where many lives were laid down and much blood was shed. Scientific progress cannot be defined from an isolated period and for a sharply defined locality. Scientific activity at any time depends on what scientific environment exists at that time due to the scientific events that went before. In the same way, every scientific act at a locality has its implication on the surroundings as much as the surroundings affect the science of a locality.

In this article the word science will be used in it's wider sense where both fundamental and applied science will be implied .The cultivation of science in Bangladesh will be sketched with a historical perspective and in the backdrop of world science. Although every country has it's unique strategy to cope with her specific problems and there are many aspects in the cultivation of science, which are common to many countries in the same condition of development. The study of science in Bangladesh in the post-independence period is thus the representative of the science in other developing countries. These countries fighting for conqueringhunger,illness,homelessness,poverty,insecurity,ignorance,fanatcism and exploitation and domination of foreign powers.

It will be argued that the progress in world science in terms of new innovations in food production, energy sources and uses, discovery of new chemicals and smart materials, development of new machines, attaining increased power to control environment and transmit information have worked implicitly to inspire the developing countries for freedom and development.

These dreams are no longer unreal due to the unprecedented progress in the world science. Thus the implication of the progress in science wherever it occurs, is universal, because it transforms the human dreams into real potential. People then can be inspired to struggle to reach the unattained reality created by science. We can not transform or control the natural environment by violating the laws of nature .It is only through the discovery of laws of nature and the innovation of techniques based on scientific principles that we can get greater freedom to fulfill our necessity and transform our dreams into attainable reality.

Science and freedom are intimately connected and are mutually interdependent .The history of many countries as also of Bangladesh provides this conviction that intellectual freedom is a needed precondition for developing scientific environment, and scientific rationality can only lead to intellectual liberation. Science thus not only brings material benefit in terms of economic development and physical power but social and cultural enrichment as well.

The forces and spirits working behind the war of independence and freedom of Bangladesh were more of cultural, intellectual and economic than geographical and material. This can be seen in the events of language movement, the struggle for cultural emancipation from prejudices and fanaticisms and for democratic rights. Bangladesh is thus unique in its spirit of liberation war and this I suppose is guided implicitly by the progress of world science.

The tremendous progress in pure and applied science has brought deeper understanding of nature and increased material prosperity.

For the first time food, health, shelter and education have become a possibility though not yet attained by the developing countries .The progress of science has not therefore been unmixed blessing for all but has also created the crisis through the creation and accumulation of chemical, nuclear and biological weapons which can destroy the whole civilization many times over in no time.

A real urge for a change of phrase and for making transition to a new world order has become urgent and universal. With such a backdrop, we would like to picture the emergence of Bangladesh as a free nation and as a part of her bigger aspiration for prosperity and progress in both material and intellectual aspects .The cultivation of science will be considered as the most important activity.

A detailed quantitative picture of science in Bangladesh with various aspects over a period as large as four decades would demand enormous space and time and as such would turn a gigantic task. Bangladesh may be a small country and her struggle for independence and for economic and cultural emancipation through the pursuit of science may appear to be an isolated event. But if we deeply analyze the reaction of world at large and the formidable conspiracies and impediments created by some of the big countries, it becomes obvious that there is ossification in the world scale which resist every little change anywhere that goes against the set world order .The small nations are free to suffer and starve but not free to change for better.

It can be said that even the weak scientific background, which we inherited from the pre independence time, played an important role in inspiring people for freedom, and freedom in its turn provided the inspiration and dream of development through science. There were great setbacks; the educational and scientific research organization suffered damages. Many teachers, researchers were killed, industries destroyed, roads and communication system disrupted, the whole nation suffered from a deep mental shock at the death of millions of innocent men and women. But at the cost of those lives and sufferings the nation gained one important mental power, a promise for change, modernization and development through the cultivation of science, recognized formally in the constitution. Thus article 16 of the state policy it is laid down” the state shall adopt effective measure to bring about a radical transformation in the rural areas through the provision of an agricultural revolution, the provision of rural electrification, the development of cottage and other industries .The initial inspiration and dreams were greatly disrupted through political killing, unauthorized occupation of state power, altering the secular principle in the constitution, and thus destroyed the main spirit of the independence. The reactionary forces within the country and foreign powers from outside who were opposed to the idea of a free, secular, democratic modern Bangladesh conspired throughout these years .In spite of all these obstacles and setbacks and loss of opportunities, Bangladesh has many success stories, specially in respect of science policy, development of educational and research institutions. developing man power and programs for the promotion of science and technology.

In many ways the events that went on Bangladesh during this time is quite representative of developing countries, which are fighting for change. Some of the problems have their origin in the indiscriminate use of technology without corresponding understanding of science and the implications of the wring use of a technology. Thus pollution and environmental damage mostly arise from inefficient use of machines or chemicals. The over population is a consequence of the new medicines against death. The new danger created for the whole human civilization by the newly developed weapons and their delivery system can only be checked by development of corresponding human values and moral responsibility through proper education.

The world science has made tremendous progress during these decades in respect of new discoveries and inventions with associate impact on material progress, energy uses, technological advancements, industrial productivity, health services and most of all deeper understanding of nature in infinitely large scale. It is in this period that high temperature superconductor, nano structured materials, supercomputer, spinotronics, and cheap photovoltaic system using thin films of silicon alloys and more efficient photovoltaic using gallium arsenide are developed. Before 1970 the energy required to produce a PV panel was more then the energy the panel could produce during its lifetime. During the last decade or so through the improvement in the efficiency of the panel and Nano structure method the pay back time is reduced to 3-5 years. Scanning tunneling microscope and atomic force microscope are also recent developments. We are also in a position to participate in these activities now.

One of the greatest discovery in cosmology was made in 1992, where cosmic background explorer discovered the cosmic ripples of only 30 millions of a degree. This discovery solved the riddle of how the galaxies are formed if the microwave background radiation indicating the creation of the universe fifteen billion years ago by a big bang is completely uniform .We thus have come to know only recently how the universe was made which according to Stephen Hawking is the scientific discovery of the 20th century if not of all time. Smoot, its discoverer commented, “if you are a religious person it's like seeing the face of god.” In particle physics

The most expensive and most exciting experimental setups has been carried out is sun to collide two hadrons moving with velocities close to the velocities of light .It cost 9 billion dollars 7,931 and is the workplace of approximately 2,600 full-time employees, as well as some 7,931 scientists and engineers representing 580 universities and research facilities and 80 nationalities. These are only few examples of world science today.

In spite of all the hazards of environment, threat of nuclear and biological weapons, energy crisis and economic setbacks. the last four decades brought of wonderful and exciting news of science not only in respect of material prosperity but more importantly in the understanding of the nature of our universe .

We presented here a very brief and partial view of the present world science because science by its very nature has continuity in space and time .As such we cannot talk of science in Bangladesh without reference to world science.

Roots of modern science were implanted in the area constituting the present Bangladesh during the British rule by some enlightened civil servants and local educational leaders .We will mention only a few institutions and personalities who almost self-consciously initiated a liberal systems of instructions which included mathematics, natural philosophy, astronomy, and other useful sciences .The first institution established in Calcutta was the Asiatic society of Bengal in 1784.This society provided the nucleus about which the scientific culture was able to grow ,An important member of this society was Rammohan Roy who advocated the first rate science education for the people in this area .It was a net consequence of this event that institutions like medical college of Bengal,Presedency college,St Xavier's college,Calcutta University and the Indian association of cultivation of science were developed.

The first Bengali Scientist who established an international reputation was Jagadish Chandra Bose born in 1858 in the then Dhaka, East Bengal now Bangladesh. He demonstrated for the first time wireless transmission of electromagnetic signals through solid walls. He gave public lecture in Calcutta town hall in 1995 and then at the Royal Institution in 1986 where Lord Kelvin was present .In 1900 those Bose became intrigued by the similarity in absorptive responses of organic and inorganic matter. He is one of the first biophysicists who devised a set of ingenious instruments to study plant physiology.

Profulla Chandra Ray was another Bangali chemist who become world renowned for his investigations on chemistry of cobra venom and search for the missing elements in the periodic table .

The other two Bangali Scientists whom we must mention for their contributions in setting the base of science in Bangladesh are Salyendranath Bose and Meghnad Saha. These two classmates of Calcutta University in mixed mathematics jointly translated Einstein papers on special and general relativity that was one of the first complete anthologies of these papers in English. Bose joined the newly established Dhaka University in 1921 as reader and in 1924 developed a method for deriving the plank's blackbody radiation law without any reference to classical electromagnetic assumptions, a problem that had defied Europian physicists for 20 years, which he sent to Einstein. It took Einestein's eyes, which he published in Zeitschrift fur physik after translating in Germany. The greatest appreciation of the contribution is reflected in the naming of all particles that have even number of spins and follow Bose-Einstein statistics as bosons.

Of the four Bengali scientists we have mentioned Maghnath Saha was the most politically active nationalist with great organizing ability. He made efforts to link the different research centers in India into a strong national scientific community. He founded the journal “Science and culture to cover topics like national planning, public sector industrialization, Nuclear and hydroelectric power and the modernizing role of science and technology.

His most original and important scientific contribution was his research on the theory of high temperature ionization. He was a pioneer of plasma physics.

The most important point to note from the activities and teaching of there scientists is that science has been the most effective common ground to harmonize the eastern and the western way of life where scientific culture can bring mutual enrichment. These scientists were all deeply patriot and committed to national development, but they choose liberal education and natural science as the basic key to uplift the national prestige. They all were serious scientists at the same time devoted to Bengali literature and have largely contributed to the public understanding of science through their scientific writings in Bengali. We dealt at length with these Bengali scientists who worked before Bangladesh emerged as an independent country, because we wanted to bring evidence to the fact that science can help most in attaining the material and intellectual goals of freedom and even in creating the inspiration and the spirit of freedom by liberating the mixed from prejudices, ignorance fanaticism and feeling of inferiority.

It we analyze deeply we can see that the tradition ,the spirit and the ideals of these scientists played as guidelines for our scientists in Bangladesh.Although it is true for nearly all the scientists who lived from British India to post independent Bangladesh, let me mention only professor Quazi Motaher Husain, Dr, Qudrat-i-Khuda, professor Zahurul Huq, and Professor Abdul Jabbar who were good scientists deeply committed to the development of Bangladesh and popularized science.

In the British period the east Bengal region had only Dhaka University as the seat of higher education and only worth mentioning research establishment was Agricultural Research Institute. After partition in 1947 four new universities were established namely Rajshahi University Chittagong University, Agricultural University and University of Engineering & Technology. Although there was no well defined science and Technology policy and no planned research and development infrastructure were built , some research organizations like council of scientific and Industrial research ,AEC ,central jute research institute , a hydraulic research institute, International Center for Diarrhoeal desease research were established. In spite of all exploitations an educated and enlightened group with a scientific tradition built up over a long time provided the spirit of freedom. The importance of science education, research and industrial and agricultural development were recognized and was reflected in the Education commissions report. The planning commission was also form to determine the strategy.

However, law or ordinance was not yet promulgated before a major setback came upon the new nation due to the assassination of Bangabandhu Shekh Mujibur Rahman. With his death there was a reversal of the whole environment of progressive, secular, objective and liberal thinking gained through our independence, were suspended. The routine work of science went on but it seems the enthusiasm and the main spirit was lost. Then after a number of educations commission and education committees were formed but none was implemented.

The scientific progress of a nation is guided by three many takes of activities: These are scientific education and research; Scientific public services and science administration; Development of industries and financial investment and material infrastructure for application of science.

These are aspects are not exhaustive or exclusive but have been chosen for the convenience of easy analysis of science in Bangladesh.

In the absence of an accepted or nationally agreed upon education policy, there has been expansion of education policy without proper direction and defined goal .The main weakness or disease of our education program has been the tendency to mould education by power politics which unfortunately in Bangladesh has been polarized into two poles .One pole is identified as the supporters of the spirits of our struggle for free Bangladesh and the other pole is guided by the forces which opposed the emergence of Bangladesh with the principles of democracy ,socialism, secularism and nationalism. Although there has been some modifications of the two poles through the influence of intermittent elections, Where to win people support slogans had to be altered, the ideological conflict has affected education policy in short intervals. Since the ultimate goal of power politics is to occupy power, it is desirable that politics should not guide education; rather the education should guide politics. This is because politics is susceptible to more local and short-term events and public attitude and sentiments and even fanaticism .On the other hand good education demands long term futuristic view, universality, rational thinking, inventiveness and guidance of people with wisdom and creativity rather than blind beliefs.

It does not mean that there is no dependence of education on politics .In fact, modern science is becoming more and more deeply dependent on political measures, scientific public services, and funding and dynamic decisions regarding development projects. This is because science has become more expensive, organized, service oriented, competitive, interdependent and international. There is a shift from empirical approach, which makes progress by endless repetition of trial and errors to scientific method of decision-making where there is convergence and integration of science and technology.

The scientific public services, the scientific approach to decision-making and management can bring about the necessary changes of technology based on a scientific attitude of mind with regards to problems of production.

In spite of all the drawbacks and lost opportunities there has been a big expansion in education sector in respect of the number of students, educational institutions and research organizations, and surely the education has been the largest area of the government and public activity. While the university of Dhaka was the only institution of higher education in Bangladesh up to 1953,by 1971 before independence university of Rajshai, University of Chittagong ,Jahangirnogor university, Bangladesh university of engineering and technology were established .After independence step by step the number of public universities has been raised to 21 of which 6 are general universities ,5 engineering universities ,3 agricultural universities and one medical university ,one affiliated university and one open university are functioning .

In addition there are over fifty private universities, which have selected market-oriented subjects to offer. As such basic science is very much neglected .The number of polytechnic institutes and centers of vocational education, which play important role in application of science and technology, have been developed. there are over sixty research and development organizations now in Bangladesh of which many are newly setup and the rest have been improved upon in the last forty years .These include Bangladesh council of scientific and industrial research, Bangladesh atomic energy commission ,Bangladesh agricultural research institute, Bangladesh rice research institute, Bangladesh institute of nuclear agriculture, space research and remote sensing organization top mention only some representative ones .

Special organizations are BANSDOC for scientific and technological documentation and national museum for popularization of science .the other components of cultivation of science that had been developed are professional societies like Bangladesh academy of sciences, Bangladesh association for the advancement of science, Bangladesh physical society, Bangladesh chemical society, Bangladesh mathematical society etc also the professional journal for research publications in respect of developing the organization and institutions Bangladesh is quite in keeping with the modern trend but have failed to make the roads of science and technology ,economics and sociology needs -in short to make the innovation cycle complete and cause mutation between science and technology and society.

If we judge critically the over all progress in science in Bangladesh during the last four decades keeping in mind it's inherited scientific tradition and the potential for future possibilities, we get a mixed feeling. There are successes stories with trends for optimism and also many failures and lost opportunities and many hopes in which we have been frustrated.

The most successful scientific field has been the agriculture where the nation has been able to keep up its production with the demands of the fast increasing population. There has also been good progress in pharmacy due to appropriated drug policy .The successes in these fields can be explained as examples of co-ordination between laboratory research and their applications in production .the third field in which Bangladesh has made some worth mentioning progress and has great potential is in information and communication technology.

This is because ICT is a new and growing field and, as we know science and technology tend to flow faster from the tips. The government's commitment to create digital; Bangladesh, a setting up of the ICT incubator and software technology park, and most of all enthusiastic activities of the young generation in this field will accelerate the development in this sector.

The most neglected frontier has been the basic sciences, although our proud contribution in world science have been primarily in physical sciences and the importance of basic research in economic development as also in providing new tools of thought have been stressed by the pioneers of development through science in this part of the world. Thus Mahendralal Sircar, who established Indian association for cultivation of science said “the educated patriotic gentleman are wasting their energies in the vain endeavor to promote technical education without even thinking about the necessity of preliminary scientific education.” Professor Abdus Salam who established the international center for theoretical physics, had the conviction that there can be no transfer of technology without a corresponding transfer of science .In fact the relation between science an technology is interacting and complementary. Their interdependence has in fact increased the progress of both science and technology. Engel said that “a modern industry can have contribution as much as ten universities indicating the dependence of science and technology .One big drawback in our science and technology policy is our failure to complete the innovation cycle of pure science, applied science, industrialization and commerce such that the final economic return from the selling of our industrial products improve through the use of new science is used in turn to improve basic research .Our educational institutions are isolated and insulated for such interactions .Our efforts for progress necessarily demands new orientations of existing institutions and accepted ideas .In spite of our many dreams in which have been frustrated there are many attainments as well .Let me end with some optimistic pictures .although there is lack of job facilities and encouragements of basic research ,universities and research institutions ,as least some of them, have scientists publishing in various fields now which did not happen ten or twenty years back. This we can see in the large number of papers in the professional conferences and also as published in professional journals

Before our independence there was practically no instance of producing locally. But we are now having postgraduate students and able supervisors top carry out PhD programs locally and have collaboration with foreign universities in this respect. This is surely a phase change in university education indicating a potential for the future .In the last few years we have developed new magnetic materials like ferrites, new magnetic alloys, amorphous and nano structured magnetic materials, and magnetic thin films which are of great importance in energy transformation, transmission and storage and also for computer memory .We can mention the innovation of oral dehydration therapy in the international center for diarrhoeal disease research Bangladesh and the recent discovery of the genome sequence of jute. Our hope of progress and the will to overcome the existing constraints will surely inspire our new generation to accept the challenges posed by modern science.

The writer is Fellow, Bangladesh Academy of Sciences.