Homi J. Bhabha, (30 October 1909 – 24 January 1966) was a nuclear Physicist, founding Director and Professor of Physics at TIFR, Mumbai. He is known as the father of the Indian Nuclear Programme. Bhabha was the founding director of two well-known research institutions, namely the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research(TIFR) and the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre both institutions were the cornerstone of Indian development of nuclear reactors and nuclear energy which Bhabha also supervised as its director.
In January 1933, Bhabha received his doctorate in nuclear physics after publishing his first scientific paper, “The Absorption of Cosmic radiation”. The paper helped him win the Isaac Newton Studentship in 1934.
Starting his scientific career from Great Britain, Bhabha returned to India and accepted a post of reader in physics at theIndian Institute of Science(IISC),Bangalore, headed by Nobel Laurate Sir C.V.Raman. During this time, Bhabha played a key role in convincing Jawaharlal Nehru who later became India’s first Prime Minister, to start the ambitious nuclear programme. In 1945, he established the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research(TIFR),Bombay and set up the Atomic Energy Commission in 1948, serving its first chairman. In the 1950s, Bhabha represented India in IAEA conferences, and served as President of the UN Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy in Geneva in 1955.
Bhabha gained international prominence after deriving a correct expression for the probability of scattering positrons by electrons, a process now known as Bhabha scattering . His major contribution included his work on Compton scattering, R-process and furthemore the advancement of nuclear physics. He was awarded Padma Bhushan by Government of India in 1954. In January 1966, Bhabha died in a plane crash near Mont Blanc, while heading to Vienna, Austria to attend a meeting of theIAEA’s Scientific Advisory Committee.
C.N.R. Rao was born in Bangalore in a Kannada family to Hanumantha Nagesa Rao and Nagamma Nagesa Rao. He completed secondary school leaving certificate in first class in 1947. He studied BSc at Central College, Bangalore. He obtained his bachelor’s degree from Mysore University in 1951, in first class, and only at the age of seventeen. He obtained a master’s in chemistry from BHU two years later. In 1953 he was granted a scholarship for PhD in IIT Kharagpur. His first research paper was published in the Agra University Journal of Research in 1954. He completed PhD in 1958, only after two years and nine months, at age twenty-four