Jagadis Chandra Bose was a Bengali scientist: a biologist, a physicist, a botanist and a writer of science fiction. He is considered the father of radio science as he was the first person in the world to demonstrate wireless transmission of electromagnetic waves after returning to India in 1885 (although he did not patent this invention, which was brought out by Marconi two years later). Bose then demonstrated how plants responded to various stimuli, demonstrating the electrical nature of this conduction. He is considered a pioneer in the field of biophysics.

Bose went to England in 1880 for his further education. Initially he had plans to compete for the ICS, and then to study medicine, but enrolled in the Natural Sciences tripos at Christ's College, Cambridge. He received his BA in 1884 and then obtained a DSc from the University of London. He later received an honorary degree from Aberdeen University.

Bose returned to India in 1885 with a position at Presidency College, Calcutta. He returned to Britain and Europe a number of times to lecture. For example in 1914, he lectured at Oxford, Cambridge and the Royal Institution. During this visit he had a private laboratory in Maida Vale, London, where various European scientists would visit Bose. He was founder and Director of the Bose Research Institute, Calcutta, in 1917. He was knighted in 1917, and made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1920 (the first Indian to become a fellow for science as opposed to mathematics).

P. C. Ray was a chemist, a historian and sociologist of science and an industrial entrepreneur. Following education in Calcutta, he won a Gilchrist Scholarship to study in Britain in the 1880s. He was met in London by Jagadish Chandra Bose and Satyaranjan Das. A week later he went up to Edinburgh University, with letters of introduction to Edinburgh families provided by Elizabeth Manning.

Ray studied chemistry, physics and zoology for a BSc and was then awarded a DSc in inorganic chemistry in 1887. He was elected Vice-President of the University Chemical Society in 1887. Ray wished to apply for a position within the Indian Educational Service although the higher posts in education were all but closed off to Indians. He returned to India in 1888, and armed with various letters of recommendation tried to enter the service. He was unemployed for a year until he got a temporary teaching post in Calcutta.

P. C. Ray eventually set up the Bengal Chemical and Pharmaceutical Works in Calcutta, India's first pharmaceutical company. In 1904 he toured Europe and was given a warm reception by Indian students at Edinburgh. In 1912, the University of Durham conferred unto him an honorary DSc degree. Ray was awarded with the Companionship of the Indian Empire (CIE) in 1912 and a knighthood in 1919. In 1916 he took up a position at the University College of Science in Calcutta, where he remained until retirement.

Susila Bonnerjee (known as Susie) was the daughter of W. C. Bonnerjee and his wife, Hemangini. Born in India, she first moved to England as a child and lived in the family house in Croydon. Her parents travelled between England and India frequently with the intention to educate all their children in England. Susila attended the Croydon High School for Girls and then gained admission to Newnham College, Cambridge in 1891 (as her sister had). Susila was awarded a second class in her Part 1 exams in 1894. She then joined the London School of Medicine for Women, and was attached to the Royal Free Hospital. Susila gained her MB degree in 1899.

A little later she returned to India and worked in Calcutta and at the St Stephen's Mission at Delhi. After her father's death in 1906, Susila took up research work at Cambridge. She was Demonstrator of Physiology in Balfour Laboratory, Newnham College, 1910-12, and was in private practice at Ealing for five years. In 1911 she became Secretary of the Indian Women’s Education Association, which was involved in raising funds to educate Indian women in England in methods of teaching. During the war, in 1915, she went to Calcutta but returned to England in early 1916. She left for India again in 1918 due to declining health and died in September 1920 in Lahore.

Dr Boshi Sen was a plant physiologist. He was married to the historian, geographer and journalist Gertrude Emerson Sen in 1932. Boshi Sen worked under Jagadish Chandra Bose and through his research visited Britain and the USA. Sen worked at University College London and became acquainted with D. H. Lawrence in the late 1920s through the Brewster family.

Sen was founder of the Vivekanda Laboratory in Calcutta and later in Almora, India. He was closely associated with the Ramkrishna Mission in India.

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, was an applied mathematician and astrophysicist. He completed his university education at Presidency College, Madras graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in physics. In June 1930, he moved to Britain for graduate studies. He was awarded a Government of India scholarship to study at Cambridge as a member of Trinity College where he became a research student under the supervision of Professor R. H. Fowler. He took his PhD degree at Cambridge in the summer of 1933. In October 1933 he was awarded a Prize Fellowship at Trinity College for the period 1933-7. He joined the Faculty of the University of Chicago in 1937 and remained there for the rest of his academic career.

He made one of his most significant discoveries while on his way to England, called ‘Chandrasekhar's limit’. He applied Einstein’s theory of relativity to the processes inside a star. His calculations suggested that once a star had burned up all its energy it would collapse to a point of infinite density, until it would disappear in what would be later described as a black hole. On arrival, however, his colleagues paid little attention to his discovery. Eddington took great interest in Chandrasekhar’s work, and it looked as though he approved of his work. He persuaded Chandrasekhar to present his findings at the Royal Astronomical Society in London on 11 January 1935. The day before the event, he found out that Eddington would give the following lecture on the same topic. Eddington used the opportunity to demolish the young researcher’s calculations and theory, dismissing it as mere mathematical game playing. However, while Chandrasekhar’s work was based on sound mathematical calculations, Eddington’s argument was in this case unfounded.

It would take years before scientists would follow up Chandrasekhar’s calculations and the controversy would preoccupy scientific journals for several years. In 1966 scientists combined computer codes for astrophysics and the hydrogen bomb and proved that a star could collapse and fall into a black hole. In 1972 the first black hole was positively identified. Chandrasekhar's outstanding contribution to astrophysics was acknowledged with the 1983 Nobel prize for physics for his work on white dwarfs and black holes and in 1984 by the Royal Society's Copley medal.

Dover was born in Calcutta to Eurasian parents in 1904. Dover's mixed-race ancestry (English father, Indian mother) and his studies in biology fostered in him a strong concern with ethnic minorities and their exclusion and oppression, as well as their cultural achievements. He studied at St Joseph's College, Calcutta, and Medical College, Calcutta, before joining the Zoological Survey of India as a temporary assistant in charge of entomology, also helping with an anthropometric study of the Eurasian community of Calcutta, writing several scientific articles and editing the Eurasian magazine New Outlook. In 1929 he met Jawaharlal Nehru. After a brief time studying at the University of Edinburgh (zoology and botany) and at the Natural History Museum in London (systematic entomology), he took up various zoological posts in Malaya and India where he also applied his scientific expertise to social welfare problems. 

Dover settled in London in 1934 in order to further pursue anthropological studies on issues of race. Julian Huxley supplied Dover with an early proof copy of We Europeans. This book marked the turning point for Dover's thinking on issues of race and drove him to write Half-Caste. He travelled widely in Europe, lecturing on race and using his scientific knowledge to help dispel the eugenicist myths surrounding race and in particular mixed-race lineage. In Britain Dover also wrote several papers and books about race including Half-Caste and Hell in the Sunshine. He was a firm believer in Indian independence, describing himself as the first Eurasian to ally himself with the struggle for Indian independence. Through these nationalist sympathies he became loosely linked with Krishna Menon and the India League. 

In the 1940s he was a regular contributor to the BBC Indian Section of the Eastern Service alongside many other Britain-based South Asians such as Mulk Raj Anand, M. J. Tambimuttu and Venu Chitale. He also befriended George Orwell. During the Second World War, he worked in Civil Defence and served with the Royal Army Ordnance Corps. He also found work as a lecturer for the Ministry of Information and edited Three, the journal of No. Three Army Formation College. Furthermore, Dover developed a mosquito repellent, known as 'Dover's Cream', which was widely used by soldiers serving in South and South East Asia. 

In 1947, after the war, Dover moved to the United States where he held a range of visiting academic posts in the field of anthropology and 'inter-group relations', focusing his concern on American minority communities.  His interests extended into the field of visual art, including 'Negro' arts. He was a member of the Faculty of Fisk University, as Visiting Lecturer in Anthropology. He also briefly lectured at the New School of Social Research, New York, and Howard University. During this period, Dover renewed his interest in African American culture. In the 1950s, after the Second World War and his career in the USA, he returned to London. He continued to lecture and contribute to publications on minority issues and culture until his death.