New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2016. xxxix, 274 pp. US$54.95, cloth. ISBN 978-0-19-946690-0.
This book examines how Homi Bhabha—best known as the founder of India’s nuclear program—created a culture of science at the institute he established—the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), one of India’s premier scientific research institutions. The book draws upon documents from the TIFR archives (that the author helped set up) and some forty interviews. It focuses on the TIFR’s first two decades, when it grew from just 13 academic staff and five graduate students in 1948 to a more substantial research Institute. TIFR presently has three schools at its campus in Bombay, and six related centers in Bangalore, Pune, and Hyderabad, undertaking research and graduate training in physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, and computer science.
An initial chapter discusses how TIFR was established in 1945 with the help of personal connections, private funding, and government support. It notes that India’s political and industrial elites considered science and technology to be crucial for India’s economic development, and therefore looked favourably on indigenous scientific ventures. Still, Bhabha had to convince the Tata Trusts to fund his proposal for a research institute comparable to centers at Cambridge, where he had obtained his Ph.D. degree. Here, personal connections helped Bhabha, as a trustee offered guidance on how to frame the grant request. Finally, Bhabha’s request dovetailed with the Trusts’ new direction in philanthropy, which focused on “pioneering” projects—that explored new frontiers and generated capacity building—rather than just on charity.
The book makes some other points on TIFR’s early development. First, Bhabha recruited distinguished scientists and mathematicians to staff the Institute. Second, the Institute could not secure a permanent home for several years, because the Government of Bombay bargained hard on the price and title for any land purchase; Bhabha eventually had to persuade Prime Minister Nehru to give TIFR a plot owned by the Defense Ministry. Third, Bhabha’s friendship with the director-general of India’s Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) helped secure governmental funding for TIFR (the book notes that, over the years, CSIR helped establish over twenty other research institutes throughout India).
The remaining chapters discuss how Bhabha and TIFR created a “culture of science” or an environment conducive to original research. To provide context, the book notes that, while colonial India had several university science departments and medical colleges, these had not encouraged scientific research. It adds that, in the years following independence, the state bureaucracy made it difficult to create a research culture at universities, which also faced (and still face) problems of low salaries, under-staffing of laboratories, shortage of equipment, and lack of contact with the outside scientific world. The book argues that TIFR overcame these obstacles not just because it had adequate funding, but also through its mode of learning (a combination of lectures, seminars, hands-on training, and peer learning, which today’s educators would describe as “active” learning or learning through experiments); through a focus on hiring young scientists who would work their way upwards to the rank of professor; and through Bhabha’s international scientific connections (while this feature was hardly unique to TIFR—an international economic regime supporting scientific exchanges between the developed and developing world had emerged by the 1950s—what was unique was the top-notch caliber of visiting scientists at TIFR).
The international network helped TIFR in several ways. For example, TIFR students were mentored and taught by academics and scientists from abroad, enabling them to learn about new technologies. In addition, TIFR’s senior scientists went abroad for training, where they established connections that facilitated fresh research projects. Further, Indian students who obtained Ph.D. degrees with Bhabha’s international colleagues were recruited into TIFR. The book also discusses projects drawing upon international networks: the strong mathematics department, the first Indian computer—the TIFR Automatic Calculator (TIFRAC)—and the research clusters in Cosmic Ray Research, Molecular Biology, and Radio Astronomy.
The book concludes with some critiques. It notes that because Bhabha spent most of his time heading India’s Atomic Energy Commission, TIFR was, by the late-1950s, administered by its deputy director who had bureaucratic training not conducive to the needs of science and technology. Moreover, Bhabha’s internationalist vision resulted in TIFR becoming an island of excellence (the “Princeton of the East”) in isolation from other Indian research labs. Further, the book cites a 2005 lecture at TIFR that faulted TIFR for not being adventurous and not taking risks in pursuing new research frontiers (the same critique could be made of several research centers and, indeed, entire academic disciplines, worldwide).
Overall, the book highlights several features of TIFR in its first two decades—personal connections and funding that helped its development, its method of training, international linkages, the Institute’s art collection and architecture, its workshop where much technology and learning developed, and its presence in the cosmopolitan city of Bombay. While these certainly contributed to a conducive research environment, and the book offers much evidence about research outputs, it does not provide a comprehensive listing of these outputs, such as publications, projects, and alumni placements. This, then, is the task for further scholarship, which could compare the factors and conditions at TIFR with those at other research centers in India, and the research outputs at these various centers and institutes of research.
Dinshaw Mistry
University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, USA
pp. 613-615