Homi Jahabgir Bhabha

Bhabha Homi Jehangir

Homi Jehangir Bhabha was born on 30 October 1909 in a wealthy Parsi family of Bombay

Bhabha attended the Cathedral and John Connon Schools in Bombay. After passing Senior Cambridge Examination at the age of 15 Bhabha entered the Elphinstone College in Bombay and later the Royal Institute of Science, also in Bombay. In 1927 Bhabha joined the Gonville and Caius College in Cambridge.

 Bhabha was taught by Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac (1902-84), who was Lucasian Professor of Mathematics (1932-69) at Cambridge and awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933 with Erwin Schrodinger (1887-1961) for their work in quantum theory. Bhabha joined the Cavendish Laboratory, from where he obtained his Ph.D. in theoretical physics.

The important contributions made by Bhabha while working at Cambridge have been summarised by G. Venkataraman (in his book, Bhabha and His Magnificent Obsessions, Universities Press, Hyderabad, 1994) as :

The explanation of relativistic exchange scattering (Bhabha Scattering).

• The theory of production of electron and positron showers in cosmic rays (Bhabha-Heitler theory).
• Speculation about the Yukawa particle related to which was his suggestion of the name meson.
• Prediction of relativistic time dilatation effects in the decay of the meson.

In 1939 when the Second World War broke out, Bhabha was in India. He came for a short holiday. However, the war changed his plan. Most of the scientists in England had to take part in war activities and there was no scope for doing basic research. So Bhabha had to abandon his plan to return to England to resume his research work at Cambridge. It may be recalled here that Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis (1893-1972) who after completing the Physics Tripos made arrangement to work under C.T.R. Wilson, the inventor of the cloud chamber, at the Cavendish Laboratory came back to India for a short vacation. He also could not go back because the First World War broke out. In 1940 Bhabha joined the Indian Institute of Science at Bangalore where a Readership in Theoretical Physics was specially created for him. Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman (1888-1970) was then the Director of the Institute. Bhabha was made a Professor in 1944. Vikram Sarabhai (1919-71) also spent a short period at the Institute when Bhabha was there. At the Indian Institute of Science Bhabha guided research on cosmic rays. He organised a group of young researchers in experimental and theoretical aspects of cosmic ray research. After spending a few years in India Bhabha was no longer interested in going back to England. Perhaps this was because of his growing sense of responsibility towards his motherland. Gradually he became convinced that it was his duty to build up research groups in the frontier of scientific knowledge. On April 20, 1944, Bhabha in a letter to Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910-95) wrote: “…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.”

The first three things that Bhabha felt necessary for putting India’s nuclear programme on a sound footing were:

• The survey of natural resources, particularly materials of interest to atomic energy programme such as uranium, thorium, beryllium, graphite etc. To achieve this a special unit, Rare Minerals Division was created at Delhi with the help of Darashaw Nosherwan Wadia (1883-1969).
• Development of strong research schools in basic sciences particularly physics, chemistry and biology by providing facilities to and training up high quality research scientists.
• Development of a programme for instrumentation particularly in electronics. A unit called Electronics Production Unit was started in TIFR, which later formed the nucleus of the large corporation known as Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL) at Hyderabad.

When Bhabha realised that technology development for the atomic energy programme could no longer be carried out within TIFR he decided to build a new laboratory entirely devoted to this purpose. He managed to acquire 1200 acres of land at Trombay, near Bombay for this purpose. Thus the Atomic Energy Establishment started functioning in 1954. The same year the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) was also established.

Bhabha was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1941. In 1943 he was awarded the Adams Prize by the Cambridge University for his work on cosmic rays, and in 1948 the Hopkins prize of the Cambridge Philosophical Society. In 1963 he was elected Foreign Associate of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and Honorary Life Member of the New York Academy of Sciences. In 1964 he was made Foreign Corresponding Academician of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Madrid. From 1960 until 1963 he was President of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics. He was president of the historic International Conference of the Peaceful uses of atomic energy held, under U.N. auspices, at Geneva in August, 1955. Bhabha was President of the National Institute of Sciences of India in 1963 and President of the Indian Science Congress Association in 1951. He was awarded the title of Padma Bhushan by the Government of India in 1954.