Nuclear Museum Logo
Nuclear Museum Logo

National Museum of Nuclear Science & History

Homi J. Bhabha

PhysicistIndia

Britain
Government OfficialScientist

Homi Jenhagir Bhabha (1909-1966) was an Indian physicist who is often considered the father of the Indian nuclear program.

Bhabha was born to a wealthy family in Mumbai. In 1927, he went to England at Cambridge University. Although he began studying engineering per the wishes of his family, Bhabha was quickly drawn to physics. “I seriously say to you that business or job as an engineer is not the thing for me,” wrote Bhabha in 1932. “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.” Bhabha earned a Ph.D. in nuclear physics in 1934.

Bhabha returned to India before World War II to join the Indian Institute of Science, where he founded the Cosmic Ray Research Institute. In 1945, he founded the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, where initial research for India’s nuclear program began. Shortly after India’s independence in 1947, Bhabha wrote to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, arguing that “within the next couple of decades, atomic energy would play an important part in the economy and the industry of countries and that, if India did not wish to fall even further behind industrially advanced countries of the world, it would be necessary to develop this branch of science.”

In 1954, Bhabha founded a nuclear research center at Trombay which was later renamed the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC). A strong proponent of nuclear energy, Bhabha organized the first UN Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy in 1955. He was the head of India’s nuclear program until his death.

Homi Bhabha died in a plane crash on the way to Geneva on January 24, 1966.

Homi J. Bhabha’s Timeline
1909 Oct 30th Born in Mumbai.

1934 Earned a Ph.D. in physics from Cambridge University.

1945 Founded the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.

1954 Founded the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre.

1966 Jan 24th Died.

Related Profiles

Matthew Sands

Los Alamos, NM

Matthew Sands (1919-2014) was an American physicist. In 1943, Matthew Sands began working for the Naval Ordnance Laboratory and developed two types of influence mines before being disillusioned by the bureaucracy of the navy.

Louis Turner

Hanford, WA

Louis Turner was a metallurgical engineer who worked on the Manhattan Project. He first became involved with the Manhattan Project at the University of Chicago in 1943.

Walther Bothe

Germany

Walther Bothe (1891-1957) was a German nuclear physicist who constructed Germany’s first cyclotron and received the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physics along with Max Born.

John W. Gofman

University of California, Berkeley

John W. Gofman was an American scientist who helped develop plutonium separation techniques during the Manhattan Project.