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| My success will not depend on what A or B thinks of me. My success will be what I make of my work. |
And we know now that he is the person behind the establishment of the two great research centers in the country,Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), and the Atomic Energy Establishment at Trombay (which after Bhabha's death was renamed as the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC).
He was born on 30th of october in 1909 at Mumbai.During the time of his education his father and uncle wanted him to become an engineer. If it so happened according to their wish, India might have lost a great personality...
In 1928 Bhabha in a letter to his father wrote: "I seriously say to you that business or job as an engineer is not the thing for me. It is totally foreign to my nature and radically opposed to my temperament and opinions. Physics is my line. I know I shall do great things here. For, each man can do best and excel in only that thing of which he is passionately fond, in which he believes, as I do, that he has the ability to do it, that he is in fact born and destined to do it... I am burning with a desire to do physics. I will and must do it sometime. It is my only ambition. I have no desire to be a `successful' man or the head of a big firm. There are intelligent people who like that and let them do it... It is no use saying to Beethoven `You must be a scientist for it is great thing ' when he did not care two hoots for science; or to Socrates `Be an engineer; it is work of intelligent man'. It is not in the nature of things. I therefore earnestly implore you to let me do physics."
His father accepted but first after completion of his engineering studies.
And he made many significant contributions in his field.Some of them are
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 he came back to India during world war.After spending a few years in India Bhabha was no longer interested in going back to England.
He realised that there was no institute in the country which had the necessary facilities for original work in nuclear physics, cosmic rays, high energy physics, and other frontiers of knowledge in physics.
This prompted him to send a proposal in March 1944 to the Sir Dorab J. Tata Trust for establishing 'a vigorous school of research in fundamental physics'. In his proposal he wrote : "There is at the moment in India no big school of research in the fundamental problems of physics, both theoretical and experimental. There are, however, scattered all over India competent workers who are not doing as good work as they would do if brought together in one place under proper direction. It is absolutely in the interest of India to have a vigorous school of research in fundamental physics, for such a school forms the spearhead of research not only in less advanced branches of physics but also in problems of immediate practical application in industry. If much of the applied research done in India today is disappointing or of very inferior quality it is entirely due to the absence of sufficient number of outstanding pure research workers who would set the standard of good research and act on the directing boards in an advisory capacity ... Moreover, when nuclear energy has been successfully applied for power production in say a couple of decades from now, India will not have to look abroad for its experts but will find them ready at hand. I do not think that anyone acquainted with scientific development in other countries would deny the need in India for such a school as I propose."
Finally it came into existance as TIFR.
Years before India became an independent nation, Bhabha was already in command of India's nuclear future.
Ramanna confirms that Bhabha planned from the very outset to establish an Indian nuclear weapons capability. Bhabha told Ramanna during that period that
"We must have the capability.We should first prove ourselves and then talk of Gandhi, non-violence and a world without nuclear weapons."
On April 26, 1948
Bhabha sent a note entitled 'Organisation of Atomic Research in India' to the
then Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru. In this note Bhabha wrote: "The
development of atomic energy should be entrusted to a very small and high
powered body composed of say, three people with executive power, and answerable
directly to the Prime Minister without any intervening link. For brevity, this
body may be referred as the Atomic Energy Commission". Bhabha emphasised
that the proposed Atomic Energy Commission should have "its own
secretariat independent of the secretariat of any other ministry or department
of the government, including the envisaged Department of Scientific and
Industrial Research". He also suggested that once the Commission was
appointed the existing Board of Research on Atomic Energy should be abolished.
The Government of India accepted Bhabha's proposal within a few months after
its submission and with the promulgation of the Indian Atomic Energy Act 1948,
the Atomic Energy Commission was formed in August 1948 .
In his tribute paid to Bhabha, Lord Redcliffe-Maud has aptly
described the different facets of Bhabha's personality: "Affectionate and
sensitive, elegant and humorous, dynamic and now dead. Homi was one of the very
few people I have ever known (Maynard Keynes was another) who enhance life
whatever the context of their living. In Homi's case this was because he was
fantastically talented but so fastidious about standards that he was never a
dilettante. Whatever he set himself to do, he did as a professional- but one
who worked for love. He was relentlessly creative, enhancing life because he
loved all forms of it. So he became a living proof that scientific excellence
can go with excellence in arts and racial differences need be no bar to
friendship. When Indian Art was last exhibited in London, the one picture
chosen for reproduction on the poster outside Burlington House was one of
Homi's. He was as fond of music as he was of pictures, contriving to fly in
from India as the first Edinburgh Festival began and, when the question of a
late Beethoven quartet was raised in conversation, knowing the opus number. At
one UNESCO conference after another he stood out even among the other
distinguished members of the Indian delegation, as a world citizen qualified in
all three subjects - education, science and culture - as hardly another member
of the conference was. He was in fact an obvious choice for the headship of the
Organization if he had felt inclined that way. Those qualified must judge how
grievous was his death for India and for science and for civilization".
He is not only a person of science but considered as a complete person.He once said "I cannot increase the content of life by increasing
its duration, I will increase it by increasing its intensity. Art, music, poetry and everything else … I do have this one purpose —
increasing the intensity of my consciousness of life.
In his tribute paid to Bhabha, Lord Redcliffe-Maud has aptly
described the different facets of Bhabha's personality: "Affectionate and
sensitive, elegant and humorous, dynamic and now dead. Homi was one of the very
few people I have ever known (Maynard Keynes was another) who enhance life
whatever the context of their living. In Homi's case this was because he was
fantastically talented but so fastidious about standards that he was never a
dilettante. Whatever he set himself to do, he did as a professional- but one
who worked for love. He was relentlessly creative, enhancing life because he
loved all forms of it. So he became a living proof that scientific excellence
can go with excellence in arts and racial differences need be no bar to
friendship. When Indian Art was last exhibited in London, the one picture
chosen for reproduction on the poster outside Burlington House was one of
Homi's. He was as fond of music as he was of pictures, contriving to fly in
from India as the first Edinburgh Festival began and, when the question of a
late Beethoven quartet was raised in conversation, knowing the opus number. At
one UNESCO conference after another he stood out even among the other
distinguished members of the Indian delegation, as a world citizen qualified in
all three subjects - education, science and culture - as hardly another member
of the conference was. He was in fact an obvious choice for the headship of the
Organization if he had felt inclined that way. Those qualified must judge how
grievous was his death for India and for science and for civilization".
A film on Dr. Homi Bhabha made by TIFR Archives ( 2 parts)
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