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October 30 was the birth anniversary of Dr. Homi J. Bhabha.
Homi Jehangir Bhabha: Who is Homi Jehangir Bhabha?
- Homi Jehangir Bhabha(October 30, 1909 – January 24, 1966) was born in a wealthy Parsi family of Bombay.
- Bhabha’s family had a long tradition of learning and service in the field of education.
- Homi Jehangir Bhabha is mostly known as the chief architect of India’s nuclear program.
- However, his contribution to India’s development goes far beyond the sphere of atomic energy.
- He had established two great research institutions namely the 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).
Who is Homi Jehangir Bhabha?: Key Works
- He played a crucial role in the development of electronics in India.
- Bhabha was an outstanding scientist and a brilliant engineer.
- He derived a correct expression for the probability of scattering positrons by electrons, a process now known as Bhabha scattering.
- His classic paper, jointly with W. Heitler, published in 1937 described how primary cosmic rays from space interact with the upper atmosphere to produce particles observed at the ground level.
- Bhabha and Heitler explained cosmic ray shower formation by the cascade production of gamma rays and positive and negative electron pairs.
- ‘In 1938 Bhabha was the first to conclude that observations of the properties of such particles would lead to the straightforward experimental verification of Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity’.
- Bhabha possessed sensitive and trained artistic gifts of the highest order. The environment in which he grew certainly helped him to develop all these fine qualities.
Homi Jehangir Bhabha: The important contributions made by Bhabha
- 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.
| About the importance of Bhabha’s research work Cecil Frank Powell (1903-1969) who was awarded the 1950 Nobel Prize for physics wrote: “Homi Bhabha made decisive contributions to our understanding of how they (the showers) developed in terms of electromagnetic processes. He was also well-known at this time for his attempts to account for those elementary particles then known to exist by a method using group theory. He was thus a very early exponent of those methods used many years later for a similar purpose by Gell-Mann and others. My friend, Leopold Infeld says that he was a distinguished and elegant theorist and his papers were always written in the best of taste” |
- It was Bhabha who suggested the name ‘meson’ now used for a class of elementary particles. When Carl David Anderson (1905-91) discovered a new particle in the cosmic radiation with a mass between that of electron and the proton he named it ‘mesoton’ which was subsequently changed by him to mesotron presumably at the advice of Millikan. Bhabha in a short note to Nature (February 1939) proposed the name ‘meson’.
Homi Jehangir Bhabha: A Multifaceted Personality
- He loved music and dancing. He had considerable knowledge of both Indian and western music.
- He painted and sketched. He designed the settings of dramatic productions. He was an architect of no mean ability. Bhabha was a perfectionist.
- He was a true lover of trees and did everything under his powers to protect them.
Homi Jehangir Bhabha: An educationist, Scientist and culturist
- 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.
Homi Jehangir Bhabha: Father of Nuclear Program in India
- Dr. Homi Jehangir Bhabha conceived the Nuclear Program in India. Dr Bhabha established the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) for carrying out nuclear science research in 1945.
- To intensify the effort to exploit nuclear energy for the benefit of the nation, Dr Bhabha established the Atomic Energy Establishment, Trombay (AEET) in January 1954 for a multidisciplinary research program essential for the ambitious nuclear program of India.
- After the sad demise of Bhabha in 1966, AEET was renamed Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC).
- Dr. Bhabha established the BARC Training School to cater to the manpower needs of the expanding atomic energy research and development program.
| In Bhabha’s own words “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”. |
- Dr Bhabha emphasized on self-reliance in all the fields of nuclear science and engineering.
- BARC is the mother of R&D institutions such as Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR), Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology (RRCAT), Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre(VECC), etc., which carry out pioneering.
Homi Jehangir Bhabha: What Bhabha felt necessary for putting India’s nuclear program on a sound footing?
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.
Homi Jehangir Bhabha: Key International Recognition
- Bhabha was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1941.
- In 1943 he was awarded the Adams Prize by 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.
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