The atomic programme initiator - Homi Jehangir Bhabha

Homi Jehangir Bhabha, known for his contribution to the Indian atomic energy programme, often regarded as its founding father, died in a plane crash in 1966.

The Father of Indian Atomic Programme in 1960s; Source: Wikipedia; Public Domain

The father of the Indian nuclear programme, the Nobel Prize Winner, and one of India’s greatest scientists, was born in 1909. His early life would take him to the Royal Institute of Science and the Cambridge University to study theoretical physics. From the early 1930s, he would focus on getting numerous scholarships and publishing his own papers, often working with atomic scientists like Bohr in Copenhagen.

In 1939, the Second World War began, and it is then that Bhabha would fully grow into the role most people know him for. He would become a professor in the Indian Institute of Science, and came into contact with prominent industrialists like JRD Tata, and politicians like Nehru. Bhabha managed to convince them of an ambitious nuclear programme which India must follow in order to achieve the great potentials of nuclear power.

Bhabha would establish the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in 1945 in Bombay, and in 1948, the Atomic Energy Commission - while also covertly working on India’s atomic weapon project. Not only did he continue his work on nuclear research, but also helped other budding scientists like Sarabhai to establish the still-infant space research programme.

Bhabha would be a lifelong advocate of using India’s vast resource of thorium to create nuclear energy, and not uranium, which was less in quantity. This was because the former was in massive quantities in India, however to develop a thorium reactor would take a long time - which Bhabha sadly will not have.

On the 24th of January, 1966, Bhabha’s Air India Flight 101 crashed near Mont Blanc in the Alps.

There have been theories that the US Central Intelligence Agency was responsible for his assassination, in light of the growing nuclear programme in India.

No concrete evidence has been recovered, however, and Bhabha’s legacy lives on in India’s nuclear power and atomic weapons programme, and the centres of atomic research he helped establish.