Dr. Homi Jehangir Bhabha 

Homi Jehangir Bhabha was born in an aristocratic family in Bombay in 1909. He passed the Senior Cambridge Examination when he was 16 and went to Cambridge to study mechanical engineering. He was influenced by his mathematics teacher Paul Dirac, who initiated him into mathematics and theoretical physics. Bhabha was in India when war broke out in Europe. In 1940, at the behest of C.V. Raman, director of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, Bhabha joined the institute as a reader in physics. When Bhabha began the study of cosmic rays, he realised the need for an institute devoted to fundamental research. Helped with funds from JRD Tata, he established the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Bombay in 1945. Bhabha with Hitler,rpoposed the cascade theory which explains why electrons are found in cosmic rays at sea level.Electrons from outer space can't penetrate the atmosphere to reach sea level. Bhabhba proposed that high energy electrons passing through matter produce gamma rays,which subsequently produce pairs of electrons and positrons.They,in turn would emit gamma rays, creating a huge shower .This goes on until the energy is exhausted.Bhabha also calculated the cross section (probability)of scattering of electrons and positrons in a material medium (habha scattering).He said the measured lifetime of meson in flight is affected by the time dilation predicted by Einstein's thoery of relativity.Bhabha was soon a force to reckon with in international science circles. His research in atomic energy is of great importance. He is considered as the founder and architect of India's atomic energy programme. He served as the president of the UN conference on peaceful uses of atomic energy in 1955 and as president of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics from 1960 to 63. He passed away in a plane crash on Mont Blanc on January 24, 1966. 

 

Dr. Hargovind Khorana

Dr. Hargovind Khorana was born on 9 January 1922 at Raipur, Punjab (now in Pakistan). He obtained his M.Sc. Honours in Organic Chemistry from the Punjab University in 1945 and later received his Ph. D. from the University of Liverpool in England. The most fruitful and creative decade of Dr. Khorana�s career began in 1960 when he joined the University of Wisconsin as Professor and co-Director of the Institute of Enzyme Research and Professor of Biochemistry (1962-70). In 1970 he was appointed Professor of Biology and Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences, Washington as well as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1971 he became a foreign member of USSR Academy of Sciences and in 1974 an Honorary Fellow of the Indian Chemical Society. He won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1968 sharing it with M.W. Nuremberg and R.W. Holley for interpreting the genetic code and analysing its function in protein synthesis. The other awards conferred on him include Distinguished Service Awards. Watumull Foundation, Honolulu, Hawaii (1968); American Academy of Achievement Award, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1971); Padma Vibushan, Presidential Award, India (1972); J.C.Bose Medal, Bose Institute, Calcutta (1972) and Willard Gibbs medal of the Chicago Section of American Chemical Society (1973-74). His researches embrace many fields and have gone a long way in answering one of the most critical and controversial issues of biology, i.e., the role of heredity and environment. His work, which is an important scientific landmark of the twentieth century, has brought closer the day when synthetic DNA may be introduced into the defective human tissues to bring about their repair or treat mentally retarded people and change them into more intelligent and healthy human beings. His synthesis of RNA, capable of replication in laboratory, is a step towards the creation of life artificially.