Vidyarthi Vigyan Manthan: A national programme to ... - Vigyan Prasar

Vikram Ambalal Sarabhai
Fondly referred to as the ‘Father of the Indian space programme’, Vikram
Sarabhai was born in Ahmedabad on 12 August 1919 to an affluent
family. It was his early years at a private school that shaped his scientific
bent of mind. After studying at the Gujarat College in his home town, he
left for England in 1937, to study physics at St John’s College, Cambridge.
There, Sarabhai earned an undergraduate tripods degree. That was the
year 1940 and the world was fighting the Second World War. So, Sarabhai
returned to India and became a research scholar at the Indian Institute
of Science, Bangalore where he studied the effects of cosmic rays.
It was at Bangalore, under the direct guidance of Nobel laureate, Dr
C V Raman, that he started setting up observatories in Bangalore, Pune
and the Himalayas to study cosmic rays. He returned to Cambridge in
1945. In 1947 he was awarded the PhD degree
Sarabhai’s real work began in 1947 along with meteorologist, K R
Ramanathan, who helped him establish the Physical Research Laboratory
in Ahmedabad. Initially, it consisted of rooms at the Science Institute of
the Ahmedabad Education Society. The scientific activities covered two
lines — one under Sarabhai dealing with the time variations of cosmic
rays and the other under the veteran meteorologist K. R. Ramanathan