Dr Homi Jehangir Bhabha

Dr Homi Jehangir Bhabha (30 October,1909–24 January,1966) was an Indian nuclear physicist, founding director, and professor of physics at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR). Colloquially known as "father of the Indi an nuclear programme", Bhabha was also the founding director of the Atomic Energy Establishment, Trombay (AEET) which is now named the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in his honour. TIFR and AEET were the cornerstone of Indian development of nuclear weapons, which Bhabha also supervised as Director.In January 1933, Bhabha received his doctorate in nuclear physics after publishing his first scientific paper, "The Absorption of Cosmic radiation". In the publication, Bhabha offered an explanation of the absorption features and electron shower production in cosmic rays. The paper helped him win the Isaac Newton +Studentship in 1934. Dr. Bhabha persuaded Sir Dorabji Tata Trust for establishing 'a vigorous school of research in fundamental physics', as he felt that, there was no institute in India which had the necessary facilities for original work in nuclear physics, cosmic rays, high energy physics, and other frontiers of knowledge in physics and thus Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, was established in 1945. Dr. Bhabha realised that technology development for the atomic energy programme could not be carried out within TIFR, he proposed to the government to build a new laboratory entirely devoted to this purpose. Thus, the Atomic Energy Establishment Trombay (AEET) started functioning at Trombay in 1954. The same year the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) was also established. He represented India in International Atomic Energy Forums, and as President of the United Nations Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, in Geneva, Switzerland in 1955. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1958. Dr. Bhabha was awarded the Adams Prize (1942) and Padma Bhushan (1954). He was also nominated for the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1951 and 1953–1956. Dr. Homi J. Bhabha died when Air India Flight no. 101 crashed near Mont Blanc, Switzerland on 24 January, 1966. It is, though, also rumoured that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was involved in his murder, in order to paralyse India's nuclear program. Gregory Douglas, a journalist who taped his interviews with a former CIA operative, Robert Crowley, for four years, later published their transcripts in a book called Conversations with the Crow. Crowley writes that CIA was responsible for assassinating Dr. Homi J Bhabha. After his death, the Atomic Energy Establishment at Bombay was renamed as the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in his honour.