A world of Bose particles

Editor's Note: Satyendranath Bose, known primarily as one of the co–founders of quantum statistics, died on 4 February 1974, a few weeks after a symposium in honor of his 80th birthday was held at the Saha Institute for Nuclear Physics in Calcutta. The following paper, originally prepared in that connection, reviews some of the more important developments in particle physics which followed from the fundamental insight contained in a four–page paper published by Bose exactly fifty years ago. At the request of the editors of the AJP, Professor Sudarshan has kindly consented to adapt his paper for reproduction here. We would like to thank William Blanpied for bringing this paper to our attention.

A playful side to twelfth-century mathematics

As editors of the book Lilavati's Daughters: The Women Scientists of India, reviewed by Asha Gopinathan (Nature 460, 1082; 2009), we would like to elaborate on the background to its title. Lilavati was a mathematical treatise of the twelfth century, composed by the mathematician and astronomer Bhaskaracharya (1114–85) — also known as Bhaskara II — who was a teacher of repute and author of several other texts. The name Lilavati, which literally means 'playful', is a surprising title for an early scientific book. Some of the mathematical problems posed in the book are in verse form, and are addressed to a girl, the eponymous Lilavati. However, there is little real evidence concerning Lilavati's historicity. Tradition holds that she was Bhaskaracharya's daughter and that he wrote the treatise to console her after an accident that left her unable to marry. But this could be a later interpolation, as the idea was first mentioned in a Persian commentary. An alternative view has it that Lilavati was married at an inauspicious time and was widowed shortly afterwards. Other sources have implied that Lilavati was Bhaskaracharya's wife, or even one of his students — raising the possibility that women in parts of the Indian subcontinent could have participated in higher education as early as eight centuries ago. However, given that Bhaskara was a poet and pedagogue, it is also possible that he chose to address his mathematical problems to a doe-eyed girl simply as a whimsical and charming literary device.

Materials, Processing, and Testing of Flexible Image Sensor Arrays

Editors' note:Flexible, large-area display and sensor arrays are finding growing applications in multimedia and future smart homes. This article first analyzes and compares current flexible devices, then discusses the implementation, requirements, and testing of flexible sensor arrays.—Jiun-Lang Huang (National Taiwan University) and Kwang-Ting (Tim) Cheng (University of California, Santa Barbara)