Government of India
Department of Atomic Energy
Public Awareness Division
No. 13(1)/2009/PAD-PR                                                                                                                      December 01, 2009
 
 
PRESS  RELEASE  No: 08/2009
 
Department of Atomic Energy in joint participation with   the Indian National Science Academy, the Indian Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Science (India) and the Royal Society, London is organising ‘Bhabha Centenary Symposium: Science and Technology at the Frontiers’ during December 3-5, 2009 to commemorate the birth centenary of Dr Homi Jehangir Bhabha.
 
The Symposium focuses on issues related to science, society and culture, spanning a range of human activity from physics, chemistry, mathematics and biology to nuclear energy, agriculture and medicine to music, painting, history and cinema. It will highlight Bhabha’s scientific contributions in various areas, the present status and future of these areas and the wide-ranging involvement of the DAE, as well as Bhabha’s commitment to India’s development and his refined sense of aesthetics. It consists of invited talks by eminent scientists, thinkers and cultural figures from India and abroad, as well as cultural programmes representing both the Indian and Western performing arts.
 
The Symposium is Chaired by Dr. Srikumar Banerjee, the newly appointed Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission and Prof. Mustansir Barma, Director, TIFR. Dr. Anil Kakodkar is the Patron. The Presidents of the three Indian science academies and Sir Arnold Wolfendale on behalf of the Royal Society, London, will deliver brief addresses.
 
The Symposium will feature talks by Nobel Laureates Chen Ning Yang and Carlo Rubbia, legendary for their theoretical and experimental discoveries respectively that underpin our present understanding of elementary particles and forces.
 
Condensed-matter physics, chemistry and nanoscience will be covered by famed materials chemist C.N.R. Rao, German physicist Knut Urban, UK metallurgist W. Mark Rainforth, Indian-American Sunil Sinha and Peter Littlewood, head of the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge. Speakers in the area of nuclear science and technology include Claude Guet of the French Atomic Energy Comissariat, R. Chidambaram, former AEC chairman and present Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India, and renowned agriculturist and parliamentarian M.S. Swaminathan.
 
Noted physicist and policy-maker M.G.K. Menon, veteran mathematician M.S. Narasimhan and senior biologist Obaid Siddiqi will speak on their personal encounters with Homi Bhabha and his role in nurturing different areas of Indian science. Seminars related to the space sciences will be delivered by former Astronomer Royal Arnold Wolfendale and former ISRO Chairman G. Madhavan Nair. US-based scientists with strong Indian connections include Raju Raghavan, expert on neutrino detectors and Ganapathi Rao Myneni who works on frontier technology for nuclear power. Sergio Bertolucci, director of Research and  Computing at CERN, will review the status of the Large Hadron Collider. Vivek Datar,  Shiraz Minwalla and Vidita Vaidya are among the outstanding young researchers in the DAE system.
 
In tribute to Homi Bhabha’s multi-faceted personality, film-maker Shyam Benegal and painter Krishen Khanna will cover the visual arts. The Symposium will also feature a performance of the Symphony Orchestra of India conducted by Zane Dalal, and a dance programme performed by Dr Mallika Sarabhai and her Darpana Academy of Performing Arts. Dr Sarabhai is the daughter of the late space scientist and contemporary of Homi Bhabha, Dr Vikram Sarabhai.
Homi Jehangir Bhabha
 
Born in Bombay on October 30 1909, Dr. Bhabha was educated at Cambridge, where he was exposed to the emerging fields of quantum electrodynamics and meson theory.  He made important research contributions in these fields before returning to India at the age of 31.  He had the vision that India could enter a new era of development in modern science and technology.  His ideal was to further the cause of science, both for the sake of enhancing human knowledge, and for its potential to bring about economic prosperity and social change. 
 
In 1943, Homi Bhabha approached the industralist J.R.D. Tata, requesting his support towards the establishing of a scientific institution.  Two years later, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) began functioning under Bhabha's directorship.  In subsequent years, Dr. Bhabha presided over the consolidation, expansion and diversification of the Institute's activities. Simultaneously he turned his attention to the setting up of an Atomic Energy research facility at Trombay, today known as the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC).  He was also instrumental in setting up the Space Commission and the Electronics Commission.
 
Homi Bhabha was a great builder of institutions and an excellent science administrator.  He was strongly involved with science in India as a whole and with the academies of science in particular. He was Vice President of the Indian Academy of Sciences and President of the Indian National Science Academy. In addition, he would often give expression to his artistic talent through such pursuits as music and painting. His sensibilities showed in his attention to minute details concerning architecture and overall aesthetics.
 
His tragic demise in an air accident in 1966 was a shock to the scientific community and to the Institute he had founded and nurtured.Fortunately, the structures which had resulted from his unique vision proved to be highly resilient. The Institutions he founded and nurtured have continued to grow and flourish and today Bhabha is considered one of the principal architects of modern Indian Science.
 
 
Chen Ning Yang, Nobel Laureate
 
Brief Summary:
 
Prof. C.N. Yang is legendary for his theoretical work proposing that “parity” (the exchange of “left-handed” and “right-handed”) is not an exact symmetry of the basic laws of nature, for which  he shared the 1957 Nobel Prize. He also wrote down certain mathematical equations together with Robert Mills which have today become the foundation of our understanding of elementary particles and forces.
 
Extended writeup:
 
Prof. C.N. Yang is legendary for his theoretical work proposing that “parity” is not an exact symmetry of the basic laws of nature, for which  he shared the 1957 Nobel Prize. Until this time it had been thought that parity, the exchange of what we mean by “left” and “right” as happens in a mirror, was a fundamental symmetry of nature and therefore no physical process could distinguish between a left-handed object and its right-handed counterpart. The parity violation proposal overthrew this belief and was later confirmed by experiments on atomic processes. While parity violation is today an established fact about nature, scientists still strive for a basic understanding of why it is the case.
In 1954, Yang together with Robert Mills wrote down equations of enormous mathematical beauty that appeared to describe particles similar to the photon, the carrier of light. Such particles were not known at the time. Theoretical work by many scientists provided a physical setting for the the Yang-Mills equations and the corresponding particles were then discovered experimentally: the “W” and “Z” particles responsible for nuclear processes like radioactive decay, as well as the “gluon” particles responsible for tightly binding protons and neutrons together inside the atomic nucleus. Today the Yang-Mills equations are the foundation of our understanding of fundamental particles and forces.
 
Prof. Yang has also published seminal works in diverse areas of physics including statistical mechanics, elementary particle physics and mathematical physics.
 
 
Carlo Rubbia, Nobel Laureate
 
Brief Summary:
 
Prof. Carlo Rubbia led the team at CERN in Geneva that discovered the “W” and “Z” particles that are fundamental to our understanding of nuclear forces. He has subsequently carried out landmark research on alternative methods of energy production, both nuclear and solar.
 
Extended Writeup:
 
Prof. Rubbia has worked at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Geneva since 1961, becoming its Director General from 1989 to 1994. In 1976, he suggested adapting CERN's Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) to collide protons and antiprotons in the same ring and the world's first anti-proton factory was built. The collider started running in 1981 and, in early 1983, an international team of more than 100 physicists headed by Rubbia and known as the UA1 Collaboration detected the “W” and “Z” particles that are fundamental to our understanding of nuclear forces. In 1984 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics.
 
During the 1990s Rubbia proposed the concept of an energy amplifier (ADS) – a novel and safe way of producing practically unlimited nuclear energy exploiting present-day accelerator technologies from natural thorium and depleted uranium. The energy resources potentially deriving from this technology, which is actively being studied worldwide, will be practically unlimited and non-proliferating. 
 
He has also developed a novel method for concentrating solar power at high temperatures for energy production, known as the Archimedes Project, which is presently being developed by industry for commercial use. He is now pursuing his solar programmes in Spain. He is currently principal Scientific Adviser of the Spanish Research Centre for Energy, Environment and Technology (CIEMAT).
 
 
S.K. Malhotra
Head, Public Awareness Division
DAE