Place of birth

Bengal, India

Place of death

India

About

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 US. 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.

Jagadish Chandra Bose, Leonard Elmhirst, Carl Jung, D. H. Lawrence, Ottoline Morrell, Gertrude Emerson Sen, Rabindranath Tagore.

Boulton, J. T. and M. H. (eds) The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Volume VI 19278 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)

Mehra, Girish N., Nearer Heaven than Earth: The Life and Times of Boshi Sen and Gertrude Emerson Sen (New Delhi: Rupa & Co., 2007)

Sen, Gertrude Emerson, Voiceless India, with an introduction by Rabindranath Tagore (London: Allen & Unwin, 1931)

LKE/IN/16, Boshi Sen Correspondence, Dartington Archives, Dartington Hall, Devon

Photos, National Portrait Gallery, London

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Banner image credit

Thurston Hopkins/Picture Post/Hulton Archives via Getty Images

Image credit

Boshi Sen; Gertrude Emerson Sen; Philip Edward Morrell, by Lady Ottoline Morrell, vintage snapshot print, late 1935, NPG Ax143952

National Portrait Gallery, Creative Commons https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Citation: ‘Basiswar (Boshi) Sen’, South Asian Britain, https://southasianbritain.org/people/basiswar-boshi-sen/. Accessed: 30 August 2025.

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