विक्रम साराभाई Vikram Sarabhai

विक्रम साराभाई Vikram Sarabhai

Vikram Sarabhai was born in Ahmedabad in 1919 into an industrial family. He studied cosmic rays at Cambridge and under C. V. Raman in Bangalore. He founded the Physical Research Laboratory in 1947 and helped create IIM Ahmedabad. He launched India’s space programme from Thumba in 1963 and led the Atomic Energy Commission after Homi Bhabha. He died in 1971 at the age of 52.

Curated by Nikhil Sharma: a cosmic-ray physicist from Ahmedabad who built PRL and IIM Ahmedabad. He launched India’s first rocket from a fishing village church at Thumba and founded ISRO. He insisted that space must serve the real problems of a poor country.

Signing the agreement with NASA for a satellite television experiment, 18 September 1969. Cropped. Photograph: NASA, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
  • 1947 Founded PRL: The Physical Research Laboratory began in his Ahmedabad home
  • 1963 First rocket from Thumba: A Nike-Apache lifted off on 21 November
  • 1969 ISRO created: He set it up on 15 August out of INCOSPAR
  • 2,400 Villages reached by SITE: The satellite TV experiment he planned ran in 1975–76

The facts

Born
12 August 1919 in Ahmedabad. His father Ambalal Sarabhai was an industrialist committed to the freedom movement (Wikipedia: Vikram Sarabhai)
Education
Gujarat College in Ahmedabad. Natural Sciences Tripos at St John’s College, Cambridge (1940). PhD from Cambridge (1947) (IIM Ahmedabad Archives: Vikram Sarabhai)
Research
Cosmic rays. His thesis was Cosmic Ray Investigations in Tropical Latitudes (Britannica: Vikram Sarabhai)
Institutions
PRL, ATIRA, IIM Ahmedabad, ISRO, the Community Science Centre, the Ahmedabad Management Association and Darpana (Current Science: Pramod Kale, Vikram Sarabhai – Visionary motivator (25 April 2020))
Space
Chairman of INCOSPAR from 1962. Created ISRO on 15 August 1969 (Scroll.in: The Vikram Sarabhai years, from Ever Upwards: ISRO in Images (18 November 2019))
Atomic energy
Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission from 1966 to 1971. President of the IAEA General Conference in 1970 (Wikipedia: Vikram Sarabhai)
Honours
Padma Bhushan (1966). Padma Vibhushan awarded posthumously (1972) (IIM Ahmedabad Archives: Vikram Sarabhai)
Family
Married the dancer Mrinalini on 3 September 1942. Two children: Mallika and Kartikeya (Wikipedia: Vikram Sarabhai)
Died
30 December 1971 at Kovalam near Thiruvananthapuram, aged 52 (Britannica: Vikram Sarabhai)

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