Homi Bhabha

Other names: 

Homi Jehangir Bhabha

Location

Gonville and Caius College
Trinity Street
Cambridge, CB2 1TA
United Kingdom
52° 12' 22.4748" N, 0° 7' 5.3112" E
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Date of birth: 
30 Oct 1909
City of birth: 
Bombay
Country of birth: 
India
Current name city of birth: 
Mumbai
Date of death: 
24 Jan 1966
Date of 1st arrival in Britain: 
01 Jan 1927
Dates of time spent in Britain: 

1927-39

2
About: 

Homi Jehangir Bhabha was the son of Jehangir Hormusji Bhabha and Meheran Pandey; his aunt Meherbai was married to Sir Dorab Tata. In 1927, Bhabha went to study engineering at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, before being permitted by his father to switch to physics in 1930. Bhabha's main research at Cambridge concerned quantum electrodynamics, and among other things, suggested the existence of heavier electrons.

In 1939, when war broke out, Bhabha was in India on vacation in India, which made a return to England impossible. He therefore joined the special cosmic ray research unit, created for him by the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust, at the Indian Institute of Science at Bangalore in 1940. He was elected fellow of the Royal Society in 1941. In June 1945, Bhabha was appointed founder director of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. Bhabha's note to the prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, on the organization of atomic research in India, resulted in the setting up of the atomic energy commission of India in August 1948, with Bhabha as its chairman. He presided over the international conference on developing peaceful uses of atomic energy, organized by the United Nations in Geneva in 1955.

Bhabha died in an air crash on Mont Blanc on 24 January 1966 on his way to a meeting of the scientific advisory committee of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.

Connections: 

Jawaharlal Nehru, Dorab Tata.

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Published works: 

(with Karl J. Khandalavala) Drawings (Bombay: Marg Publications, 1962)

(with Jamshed Bhabha) Homi Bhabha as Artist: A Selection of His Paintings, Drawings, and Sketches (Bombay: Marg Publications, 1968)

Homi Jehangir Bhabha: Collected Scientific Papers (Bombay: Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, 1985)

(with Tata Institute of Fundamental Research) Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Studies in Physics (London: Oxford University Press, 1962)

(with Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and Komaravolu Chandrasekharan) Monographs on Mathematics and Physics (London: Oxford University Press, 1952)

Secondary works: 

Anderson, Robert S., Building Scientific Institutions in India: Saha and Bhabha (Montreal: Centre for Developing-Area Studies, 1975)

Cockcroft, John and Menon, M. G. K., Homi Jehangir Bhabha, 1909-1966 (London: The Royal Institution of Great Britain, 1967)

Current Biography (Sept 1956)

Desmukh, Cintamani, Homi Bhabha (Mumbai: Granthali, 1994)

Electrotechnics [Bangalore] (Aug 1943)

Kulkarni, R. P., and Sharma, V., Homi Bhabha: Father of Nuclear Science in India (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1969)

Lala, R. M., The Heartbeat of a Trust: Fifty Years of the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust (New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill, 1984)

Penney, W. G., Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 13 (1967), pp. 35-55

Physics Today (March 1966), p. 108

Science Reporter [Bhabha number] (Oct 1966)

Singh, Virendra, 'Bhabha, Homi Jehangir (1909–1966)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/51791]

Venkataraman, G., Bhabha and His Magnificent Obsessions (London: Sangam, 1994)