Homi J. Bhabha

Homi J. Bhabha was an Indian physicist who founded India's nuclear research program and is regarded as the architect of Indian nuclear science. Early in his career Bhabha made significant theoretical contributions to particle physics, calculating the scattering probability of electrons off positrons, a process now called Bhabha scattering, and in 1937, working with Walter Heitler, he developed the cascade theory explaining how high energy cosmic ray particles entering the atmosphere produce showers of secondary particles through repeated collisions. Bhabha returned to India in 1939 and became the driving force behind founding the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Bombay in 1945, serving as its first director and building it into a leading center for research in cosmic rays, nuclear physics and mathematics that also trained the scientists who staffed India's later atomic energy program. He became the first chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission and secretary of the Department of Atomic Energy, shaping the strategy, institutions and early reactor and research programs that established India's civilian nuclear power sector and its nuclear research capability more broadly. Bhabha died in a plane crash near Mont Blanc in 1966 while traveling to a scientific meeting in Vienna.