Elphinstone College
Royal Institute of Science
Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge

Padma Bhushan (1954)

Homi J. Bhabha was an Indian scientist and nuclear physicist and served as the chief architect of the Indian atomic energy program. He was responsible for the establishment of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. He founded Bhabha scattering which is about scattering positrons by electrons. He is known as the father of India’s nuclear program. He received Padma Bhushan award in 1954.

He was born on 30^th October 1909 in Bombay in British India. He belonged to a wealthy Parsi family. He studied at Cathedral Grammar School at Bombay and entered Elphinstone College after finishing the Senior Cambridge Examination with Honors. He attended Royal Institute of Science and joined Caius College of Cambridge University in 1927. He was interested in theoretical physics. He passed the Tripos exam in 1930 and passed with first class.

He worked with Wolfgang Pauli at Zurich and at Enrico Fermi at Rome. He completed his Ph. D and worked at the Cavendish Laboratory. In 1932 he got first class in Mathematical Tripos. He published his first scientific paper on Cosmic Radiation in January 1933. He published many papers. He returned to India in September 1939 and joined Indian Institute of Science. Here in the Cosmic Ray Research Unit, he worked on the theory of the movement of point particles.

He represented India in International Atomic Energy Forums and served as the President of the United Nations Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy in Geneva in Switzerland in the year 1955. He served as the member of the Indian Cabinet’s Scientific Advisory Committee. Together with Vikram Sarabhai, he established Indian National Committee for Space Research.

On 24^th January 1966, when he was going to Vienna in Austria for attending the meeting of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the International Atomic Energy Agency, he died in a plane crash near Mont Blanc in France. Homi Bhabha Fellowship was given since 1967.