Homi J. Bhabha (A Life)

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

Homi J. Bhabha: A Life is the first full-fledged biography of the theoretical physicist who founded India's nuclear programme. A Renaissance man, Bhabha was also a lover of music and an accomplished painter. A scientist and aesthete who was equally at home in the world of science and the arts, he was both a visionary and a doer-a man of thought as well as a man of action. A great deal is known of his astonishing intellect, but less about his human side. This biography combines both aspects of him, presenting a more complete picture of the man.

Bhabha's life story also provides a good vehicle for telling the story of Indian science and the foundations of India's atomic energy programme. This biography is as much an early history of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, and India's atomic energy programme as it is an account of Bhabha's life and work.

Meticulously researched and narrated in rich, human, political and scientific detail, this biography tells the story of one of India's greatest scientists of the twentieth century and the country's greatest-ever science administrator.

Bakhtiar K. Dadabhoy is the author of eight books including the bestselling Jeh: A Life of JRD Tata, Sugar in Milk: Lives of Eminent Parsis, A Book of Cricket Days, A Dictionary of Dates, the critically acclaimed Barons of Banking: Glimpses of Indian Banking History and Zubin Mehta: A Musical Journey, the authorized biography of music conductor, Zubin Mehta. He was educated at Hindu College, Delhi University, and the Delhi School of Economics. He has written the script for Nani: The Crusader, a documentary on legal luminary, Nani Palkhivala. His most recent book was The Magnificent Diwan: The Life and Times of Sir Salar Jung I. He currently resides in New Delhi.

The origins of this book lie in a detailed profile I wrote on Homi J. Bhabha for my book Sugar in Milk: Lives of Eminent Parsis over a decade ago. Until then, I had only known what everybody knows about Bhabha: that he was a distinguished physicist who pioneered fundamental research and atomic energy in India. At the time, I was only dimly aware of what a fascinatingly diverse man he was: a lover of music, an accomplished painter (and, later, an avid collector), a violinist and a budding poet-truly a Renaissance man. I also did not know much about Bhabha the man-his loves, his likes, his bond with his parents, his close relationship with a lady companion and more. He drew upon a profound knowledge of science, history and English literature, and his assimilation into western, particularly British life, was so complete that his real life-space was little understood by his European colleagues. No one expected to find a scientist from a British colony who was indistinguishable from his western counterparts. Bhabha cast serious doubts on the dichotomy of metropolis and colony inherent in the institutions of science at the time.

Learning all this, I was surprised to discover that no full-length biography of him had been written until then. Bhabha was a man of many talents and well worth being the subject of a popular biography- one that would attempt to do justice to his important role in Indian science, to the singularity of his mind, and to the depth and diversity of his intellectual interests. The more I looked into his life, the more remarkable it seemed; I am sure that the reader will agree that his is a story very much worth telling.