Amar Bose: A
life in pursuit of excellence
Shivanand Kanavi
(appeared in Rediff: http://www.rediff.com/money/report/slide-show-1-amar-bose-a-life-in-pursuit-of-excellence/20130716.htm)
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(Photographs by Palashranjan Bhaumick, poluda@gmail.com)
Amar Bose, creator of the well-known audio brand in the world, passed away on July 12, at his home, near Boston, Massachusetts, USA. He was born of American mother and Indian father. Noni Gopal Bose, his father, was an Indian revolutionary, who had jumped into a ship to USA, in 1920, to escape from the British CID, who were chasing him.
Amar
Bose was born in Philadelphia in 1929, where his mother was a school teacher
and father ran a radio shop. Father continued to working as part of a support
network for Indian revolutionaries in the US along with Taraknath Das.
When I
met him, Amar Bose vividly recalled the hush-hush meetings in his house and the
visit by a person who had escaped the horror of the massacre at Jalianwala
Baug. The stories of British atrocities, which he heard from this visitor as
well as from others, left an indelible impression on him.
Bose's
childhood in Philadelphia was not easy either. One pictures the deep south of
US as the seat of racism and bigotry, but during the ‘30s and ‘40s, right in
Philadelphia, the home of Bill of Rights, the Boses had to suffer intense
racial discrimination and humiliation. “My mother was a vegetarian, a Vedantin
and more Indian in her outlook than I and my father. Nobody would rent a house
for us. We had to send my mother house hunting, since she was white American”.
“Every
time we entered a restaurant we would keep on waiting and nobody would serve
us. Finally my father would call the manager, the whole restaurant would
suddenly fall silent and father would make a short speech: 'Sir, we are good
enough to cook and wait and serve you. We are good enough to die for this
country in the wars, but we are not good enough to pay and be served. Why is
that?'. Obviously, it was largely a rhetorical question and used to have no
effect on the proprietor. We all used to then stand up and leave the place. My
father never tried to say that he was not an African-American but an Indian. But
all said and done, as far as recognising talent for what it is, there is no
country like the US”, he added.
Teen
aged Amar Bose picked up his love for Electronics in his father’s Radio repair
shop. His brilliance showed at an early age and got him into the fabled
engineering college at MIT, despite poverty at home. From there he climbed
higher and higher peaks of academic brilliance, finishing with a PhD guided by
Norbert Wiener, one of the greatest Mathematicians of 20th century.
He got
an offer of a teaching job at MIT itself in 1956. However Norbert Wiener, who had
many friends in India, advised Bose to take a Full Bright Scholarship and spend
a year in India. Thus Amar Bose spent a year in Kolkata at the Indian
Statistical Institute led by Prof P C Mahalnobis and in Delhi at the National
Physical Laboratory, then headed by Prof K S Krishnan. Bose carried fond
memories of that year spent in India.
On his
return to MIT he very soon became perhaps the most popular professor for over
four decades. Many of his students vouch for his energy and his brilliant
teaching. He also used to set the most difficult problems for them. “At times I
used to give PhD level problems to sophomores. You should stretch the students
to the limit. That is how you will come to know who is capable of what and
results often can surprise you”, he said.
While
at MIT he innovated many things in acoustics and audio systems which led to the
revolutionary Bose speakers. MIT allowed him to set up his own company, while
continuing to teach. The motto of Bose Corp is “Better Sound Through research”.
He stuck to it energetically and built perhaps the biggest global brand in
Audio surpassing many other bigger names like Phillips and Sony.
The
secret of his success has always been path breaking Research and Development. However
what is not known to many is that he never remained confined to only accoustics.
His outstanding innovations are also in automobile engineering, signal
processing and so on. When I asked him why he had not taken the company public
and raised money in the market by selling shares, he said, “As far as employees
are concerned, we pay them top of-the-line salaries. I myself don't need the
cash. In fact, every dollar of profit made in the company has been ploughed
back. Moreover, taking it public will mean others (the Board of Directors- Ed) telling us how to spend our dollars
in research. Some of the research projects we are working on will take decades
and some may not even be completed. I am sure we could not have taken up such
projects if we were not free to do what we want to.”
His
devotion to his alma mater, MIT, was legendary. It was marred a decade ago by
his strong public disagreements with MIT’s IPR policy. But that did not stop
him from going a step further and putting all his shares in Bose Corp in a
Trust fund, which will benefit his alma mater!
Clearly,
knowledge creation is what excited Bose. We could see that in the sparkle in
his eyes and the alacrity with which he jumped up to explain technical points
about wave guides; normal modes and spherical speakers; or a subtle point about
non-linear systems or stochastic processes. But this academic took commercial
challenges also as intellectual challenges and either licked the competition or
created totally new technologies. The way he conquered the Japanese market is
an abject example to American corporations who constantly wring their hands
about 'fortress Japan'.
He leaves behind two children son Vanu and daughter Maya. Dr Vanu Bose, an MIT alumnus himself, has founded a company, Vanu, providing solutions in wireless and cellular communications. Vanu again bridges Us and India with establishments in Boston, Bengaluru and Delhi.
To use
a cliché, Amar Bose never grew old. He simply oozed positive energy. He visibly
cringed if anybody called him an icon but used to jump up to the blackboard
with a chalk and wave his hand all over if you discussed Physics. May he rest
in peace.
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