Homi Jehangir Bhabha
HOMI JEHANGIR BHABHA
(30
-10 1909 to 24 - 01 - 1966)
1.1 When I was a physics teacher, I used to ask my students, “Who is the ‘Father
of Indian Nuclear Programme’?” and I was always satisfied with the answer ‘H.J.
Bhabha’.
1.2 H.J. Bhabha was an
Indian nuclear physicist. He was the founding director of TIFR. TIFR is the
short form of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. He also served as the
professor of physics at this Institute and led it into victorious achievements.
1.2 Bhabha was
also the founding director of another well-known research institution namely
the Trombay Atomic Energy Establishment. Now this institutions named is after
him and is known as BARC - Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. Both these
institutions were the corner-stones of development of nuclear research in
Indian. They made India capable of developing nuclear weapons which Bhabha also
supervised as its director.
2.0 Early life
2.1 H. J. Bhabha
was born into a wealthy and prominent industrial Parsi family. He was born on
30 October 1909. His father was Jehangir Hormusji Bhabha, a well known lawyer
and his mother was Meheren. By his birth in this illustrious family with a long
tradition of learning and service to the country, H.J. Bhabha was related to
Dinshaw Maneckji Petit, and Dorabji Tata.
3.0 Education
3.1 Bhabha
received his early education at Cathedral & John Connon School, Bombay (now,
Mumbai). At age of 15 after passing his Senior Cambridge Examination with Honors,
he entered Elphinstone College.
3.2 His
father Jehangir and his uncle Dorab Tata planned for Bhabha to obtain a degree in
Mechanical engineering from Cambridge and then return to India, where he would join
the Tata Steel Mills in Jamshedpur as a metallurgist. They insisted him for
this. He so attended the Royal Institute of Science until 1927 before joining
Caius College of Cambridge University.
3.3 Bhabha had
a great desire for Mathematics. Bhabha's father understood his son's
predicament, and he agreed to finance his studies in mathematics provided that
he obtain first class on his Mechanical Sciences Tripos examination. Bhabha
took the Tripos examination in June 1930 and passed with first class.
Afterwards, he excelled in his mathematical studies under Paul Dirac to complete the Mathematics Tripos.
4.0 Research
4.1 In
the meantime, he worked at the Cavendish Laboratory, while working towards his doctorate degree in theoretical physics. At that time, the Cavendish Laboratory was the
centre of a number of scientific breakthroughs. Some of them are listed below.
(i) James Chadwick had discovered the neutron.
(ii)
John Cockcroft andErnest Walton
transmuted lithium with high-energy protons .
(iii)
Patrick Blackett and Giuseppe Occhialini used cloud chambers to demonstrate the
production
of electron pairs and showers by gamma radiation.
4.2 During
the academic year 1931–1932, Bhabha was awarded the Salomons Studentship in Engineering.
In 1932, he obtained first class on his Mathematical Tripos and was awarded the
Rouse Ball traveling studentship in mathematics.
4.3 During
this time, the nuclear physics was attracting the greatest minds and it was one
of the most significantly emerging fields as compared to theoretical physics,
the opposition towards theoretical physics attacked the fields as it was
lenient towards theories rather than proving the natural phenomenon through
experiments.
4.4 Conducting experiments
on particles which also released enormous amount of radiation, was lifelong
passion of Bhabha, and his leading edge research and experiments brought great
laurels to Indian physicists who particularly switched their fields to nuclear physics.
4.5 In January 1933, Bhabha published his first
scientific paper. It was "The Absorption of Cosmic radiation".
In this publication Bhabha offered an explanation of the absorption features
and electron shower production in cosmic rays. His
publication "The Absorption of Cosmic radiation" helped him win
the Isaac Newton Studentship in 1934, which he held for the next three years.
4.6 In the following year, he completed his
doctoral studies in theoretical physics under Ralph H. Fowler and received his
doctorate in nuclear physics in the same year.
5.0 Bhabha scattering
5.1 Bhabha split
his time working at Cambridge and with Niels Bohr in Copenhagen. In 1935,
Bhabha published a paper in the ‘Proceedings of the Royal Society-Series A’.
In this he performed the first
calculation to determine the cross section of electron-positron scattering.
Electron-positron scattering was later named Bhabha scattering,
in honor of his contributions in this field.
6.0 Publication of Research Papers
6.1 We have already mentioned the publication of Bhabha’s
first research paper "The Absorption of Cosmic
radiation".
6.2 In
1936, he published another paper namely "The Passage of Fast Electrons and
the Theory of Cosmic Showers" in the Proceedings of the Royal Society-
Series A. In which he used his
theory to describe how primary cosmic rays from outer space interact with the
upper atmosphere to produce particles observed at the ground level. Bhabha and
Heitler then made numerical estimates of the number of electrons in the cascade
process at different altitudes for different electron initiation energies. The calculations
agreed with the experimental observations of cosmic ray showers made by Bruno
Rossi and Pierre Victor Auger a few years before. Bhabha later concluded that
observations of the properties of such particles would lead to the straight forward
experimental verification of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.
6.3 Bhabha
won the Senior Studentship of
the 1851 exhibition in the year 1937. This helped him continue his work
at Cambridge until the outbreak of World War II in 1939.
7.0 In
India
(WILL CONTINUE)
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