Satyendra Nath Bose

The present paper has for its object the deduction of the radiation formula in a new way which seems to me to be more satisfactory.

I have tried to deduce the law of radiation of black bodies on the basis of a new method of counting the states in phase space.

The essential point is that the photons are indistinguishable.

In this paper, I wish to show how Planck's formula can be derived without any hypothesis of 'light quanta' but by a simple application of statistical mechanics to the elementary resonators.

The method of counting states is different from the classical one.

The indistinguishability of particles leads to a different statistics.

One cannot distinguish between two photons of the same energy and polarization.

The number of ways of distributing N indistinguishable particles among n cells, with n_i particles in the i-th cell, is given by a specific formula.

This new statistics, when applied to light quanta, leads directly to Planck's law.

The derivation is purely combinatorial.

The concept of indistinguishable particles is crucial.

The statistical treatment of light quanta as indistinguishable entities is the key.

The method is applicable to any system of indistinguishable particles.

The quantum mechanical nature of particles is implicitly contained in the statistics.

This method of counting states is now known as Bose-Einstein statistics.

The paper was initially rejected by a journal, but Einstein recognized its significance.

Einstein translated the paper into German and submitted it himself.

The work laid the foundation for the concept of Bose-Einstein condensation.

My work on statistics was a natural extension of Planck's ideas.

I was trying to find a more rigorous derivation of Planck's law.