Bhabha, Homi Jehangir
Bhabha, Homi Jehangir
(jəhän'gēr` bä`bä), 1909–66, Indian physicist, b. Bombay (now Mumbai). He was educated at the Royal Institute of Science, Bombay, and at Cambridge, England, where he studied cosmic rays and atomic physics. He was the leading Indian atomic physicist of his time. In 1945 he became professor of theoretical physics and director of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bombay. He was named the first chairman (1948) of India's Atomic Energy Commission and became secretary (1954) of its atomic energy department. He was president of the UN Atoms for Peace conference in 1955.Bhabha, Homi Jehangir
Born Oct. 30, 1909; died Jan. 24, 1966. Indian physicist; organizer of atomic science and technology in India. Graduated from Cambridge University in 1930.
The Tata Institute of Fundamental Research was established in Bombay in 1945 on Bhabha’s initiative. He was chairman of the Indian Committee on Atomic Energy (1947) and director of the Trombay Atomic Center (1957), which he founded. Bhabha did research on the physics of cosmic rays and the theory of mesons and high-spin particles. In 1937, with W. Heitler, he worked out the cascade theory of cosmic-ray showers. Bhabha was the first to show that the lifetime of a moving meson is longer than that of a resting meson.
Bhabha was a major public figure. He was chairman of the first conference on the peaceful use of atomic energy held in Geneva in 1955. For several years he headed the Presidium of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP). He was an honorary member of foreign academies of sciences and scientific societies.