A wandering monk's 1893 shipboard encounter with Jamsetji Tata is woven into the founding story of India's premier science institute
In 1893, sailing from Yokohama to Vancouver aboard the SS Empress of India on his way to Chicago, Swami Vivekananda shared the steamer with the industrialist Jamsetji Tata and they discussed science and India's future. Five years later Tata wrote to him — calling himself a 'fellow-traveller' from that Japan-to-Chicago voyage — while planning the research institute that became the Indian Institute of Science.
How we know
Vivekananda and Tata met aboard SS Empress of India, Yokohama–Vancouver, July 1893; Tata's letter of 23 November 1898 opens 'I trust you remember me as a fellow-traveller on your voyage from Japan to Chicago' (singular — Tata identifying himself); IISc came into existence 1909 (tata.com/newsroom/jamsetji-tata-letter-to-swami-vivekananda; thebetterindia.com/127599; science.thewire.in on Vivekananda–Nivedita–Tata–IISc).
One of many fact-checked wonders across eight traditions at The Spring of Wisdom.