Known as the ‘father of the Indian nuclear programme’, Homi Jehangir Bhabha was born on October 30, 1909. A nuclear physicist and institution-builder, he was the founding director of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, where he also taught physics. It is generally believed that Bhabha, who dominated the country’s scientific and nuclear establishments in the first two decades after Independence, actively pursued the goal of making India a nuclear superpower.
Bhabha was born to Jehangir Hormusji Bhabha, a prominent lawyer, and Meheren, whose artistic temperament influenced her son. He grew up in Bombay. The Bhabhas belonged to a respected Parsi industrialist family.
Bhabha’s uncle, Dorab Tata, was the son of the founder of the Tata group.
In 1927, at the age of 18, Bhabha went to Britain to study engineering at the Cambridge University. His parents were confident that after he obtained an engineering degree, a brilliant future awaited him at Tata Industries in India. But Bhabha had physics (and nuclear physics, in particular) on his mind.
“. . . I seriously say to you that business or a job as an engineer is not the thing for me [. . .] I am burning with a desire to do physics,” he wrote to his father in 1928: “[. . .] I earnestly implore you to let me do physics . . .”
Hormusji agreed.
Accordingly, after finishing mechanical engineering, Bhabha studied physics and ended up receiving a Ph.D. in physics in 1935 from Cambridge. His subject of choice was Cosmic Rays. The years between the two World Wars was a great time to be a physicist in Europe. Some of the most important discoveries in physics were being made then, and Bhabha met some legendary physicists of the day, such as Niels Bohr and and Enrico Fermi.
Later, Bhabha’s friendships at Cambridge would play an important role in developing India’s own nuclear programme.
When Bhabha came to India in 1939 on a short vacation, the Second World War broke out, and he decided to stay back. He soon took up a post at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, as a Reader in Theoretical Physics. At that time, the Nobel laureate C. V. Raman was the institute’s director, and the legendary Vikram Sarabhai also did a short stint there.
In the next few years, the idea of creating centres of scientific excellence in India took firm root in Bhabha’s mind.
“[. . .] I have recently come to the view that provided proper appreciation and financial support are forthcoming, it was one’s duty to stay in one’s country and build up schools comparable with those that other countries are fortunate in possessing,” he wrote in a letter to a fellow scientist in 1944.
In the same year, he wrote a proposal to the Tata Trust, leading to the establishment in 1945 of one of India’s premier nuclear research institutes, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. Bhabha was its first director.
Bhabha first met Jawaharlal Nehru while returning to India in 1939. The two men would share a close bond, and when it came to matters of nuclear policy, Prime Minister Nehru had a high degree of trust in him.
Less than a year after Independence, heeding Bhabha’s request, Nehru agreed to bring out the Atomic Energy Act in the Constituent Assembly, leading to the establishment of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission. The Department of Atomic Energy was set up in August 1954, with Bhabha its secretary.
In the years after Independence, Bhabha hired several scientists who would later play a key role in India’s nuclear energy as well as weapons programme. Among them was Raja Ramanna, one of the key brains behind India’s first nuclear test in 1974.
Bhabha spelt out a three-phase nuclear programme for the nation, comprising utilisation of natural uranium, plutonium and sufficient thorium resources in thermal, fast and advanced reactors with closed fuel-cycle. “The aim of long-range atomic power programme in India must [. . .] be to base the nuclear power generation as soon as possible on thorium rather than uranium,” he once said.
Bhabha’s vision was, however, not confined to nuclear policy, but enveloped a larger scientific framework for a young nation.
“A booster in the form of foreign collaboration can give a plane an assisted take-off, but it will be incapable of independent flight unless it is powered by engines of its own,” he said in a speech on January 7, 1966, using the metaphor of an aeroplane. “If Indian industry is to take off and be capable of independent flight, it must be powered by science and technology based in the country.”
Bhabha, who died in a plane crash in the Alps on January 24, 1966, had several aspects to his creativity, including a keen eye and ear for art and music. His art collection was displayed at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Mumbai in 2011.
Summing up the life and contribution of Homi Jehangir Bhabha, the industrialist J. R. D Tata remarked: “Scientist, engineer, master-builder and administrator, steeped in humanities, in art and music, Homi was a truly complete man.”
Also on this day:
1883 — Dayanand Saraswati, Hindu religious leader and founder of Arya Samaj, passed away
1887 — Sukumar Ray, children’s writer and humorous poet from Bengal, was born
1949 — Pramod Mahajan, BJP leader, was born
1958 — Abhijeet Bhattacharya, Indian singer, was born
1990 — Vinod Mehra, Hindi film actor, passed away
