Homi Jehangir Bhabha was a physicist who made important contributions at the international (there are processes and equations named after him in physics) and national (he was the head of the Indian nuclear program and the founder of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre) levels. This post is a discussion of the recent and quite extensive (722 pages) biography of Bhabha by Bakhtiar Dadabhoy.
Science
Bhabha obtained his PhD under Ralph Fowler at Cambridge, who was one of the early physicists to apply quantum theory to astrophysics.
Bhabha made fundamental contributions to cosmic ray physics (Bhabha-Heitler theory), collisions between electrons and positrons (Bhabha scattering, nowadays regularly used to calibrate beams in particle accelerators), and spinning particles (Bhabha-Corben equations and Bhabha equations).
His contributions were substantial enough for him to be nominated five times for the Nobel prize in physics, which however he was not awarded.
Administration
Bhabha was visiting India, intending to return to the West when the second World War broke out. He stayed on in India and took the opportunity to set up a first rate research institute: the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR). I spent a summer at TIFR in my senior year in college, under the Visiting Students Research Program, working on a particle accelerator. During this time I had the privilege of meeting Prof. Virendra Singh, who is quoted often in the book. He was the Director then, and his younger son was my classmate at IIT Bombay.
Bhabha also set up the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC). After he had heard of the discovery of atomic fission, he suspected that America was building a bomb. After the bomb was deployed, along with Meghnad Saha and S. S. Bhatnagar, Bhabha pushed for an Indian atomic energy program and eventually a nuclear weapons program.
Bhabha was also, along with the statistician P. C. Mahalonobis, an early pioneer of high performance computing in India.
Eventually he became too mired in administration to continue active research and teaching. Interestingly, the book says he gave instructions around this time (1956) that he should be called "Dr." and not "Prof." Bhabha, as he could no longer discharge the duties of the professoriat!
Music
Bhabha was very sensitive to music. The book says playing music was all his parents had to do to stop him from crying as a child. As an adult, Bhabha astonished his European colleagues by pointing out subtle features in, e.g. Beethoven's quartets, which they were unaware of.
Art and Literature
Bhabha was a painter of distinction himself. With the permission of Nehru, he used 1% of the TIFR budget to acquire works of art. He commissioned artists like M. F. Hussain to paint on campus (he also tried to contract Picasso). He played an important role in the early days of the magazine Marg, which was established by the writer Mulk Raj Anand.
Conclusion
Dadabhoy's biography is quite detailed, especially about the setting up of TIFR, BARC and India's nuclear arms program. It educated me about Bhabha's intimate correspondence with Pauli, his close relationship to Nehru, his untimely death in an air crash in 1966 and the conspiracy theories that followed.
There is ample space given in the book to the development of related characters, such as Raman, Saha, Schrodinger, Born, Bhatnagar, Sarabhai, etc. I was impressed with how well the physics is handled in the book, given that Dadabhoy is not trained in the discipline. All in all a substantial and informative read.
コメント