Vikram Sarabhai

• 1. Introduction

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  Vikram Sarabhai never saw the Moon lander that carries his first name. Chandrayaan-2's lander, called Vikram in his honour, was meant to touch down near the Moon's South Pole on the 20th of September 2019. The man behind the name is often called the father of the Indian space program. Yet he began as a physicist who studied particles arriving from beyond the Earth. How did a scientist from an Ahmedabad industrial family come to shape a nation's rockets, reactors and satellites? Why did he also build a business school, a market research firm and a dance academy? And what was he doing in his final hours, with a launch vehicle design still waiting for his review?

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• 2. A Cambridge Education

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  The 12th of August 1919 was the day Vikram Ambalal Sarabhai was born in Ahmedabad, into a Gujarati Shvetambara Shrimali Jain family. His father, Ambalal Sarabhai, was a major industrialist who was committed to the Indian independence movement. The young Vikram first attended Gujarat College in Ahmedabad. He then moved to the University of Cambridge in England, where he took his tripos in natural sciences in 1940. In 1945 he went back to Cambridge to work toward a PhD. His thesis, titled "Cosmic Ray Investigations in Tropical Latitudes", was written in 1947. That subject, the study of cosmic rays, would anchor his first institution back home.

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• 3. A Laboratory at Home

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  The first home of the Physical Research Laboratory was a residence, a house Sarabhai called the "RETREAT". In 1947 he founded the laboratory there, and its modest early work was research on cosmic rays. Later that year, on the 11th of November 1947, the institute was formally established at the M.G. Science Institute in Ahmedabad. Two bodies backed it: the Karmkshetra Educational Foundation and the Ahmedabad Education Society. Kalpathi Ramakrishna Ramanathan became its first director. The initial focus was cosmic rays and the properties of the upper atmosphere. Grants from the Atomic Energy Commission later widened its work to theoretical physics and radio physics. The laboratory earned a nickname, the cradle of space sciences in India, and the title proved apt.

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• 4. The Institution Builder

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  Alongside science, Sarabhai led the business conglomerate that his family owned. His interests ran from science to sports to statistics. That last curiosity produced the Operations Research Group, the first market research organization in the country. He also helped create the Nehru Foundation for Development in Ahmedabad. Two other institutions followed: the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad and the Ahmedabad Textile Industry's Research Association, known as ATIRA. For the management institute, he worked together with other industrialists based in Ahmedabad. Art mattered to him too. On the 3rd of September 1942 he married the classical dancer Mrinalini, and together they founded the Darpana Academy of Performing Arts. Their daughter Mallika became an actress and activist, and their son Kartikeya also became active in science.

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• 5. Atoms and Honours

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  A research reactor at Kalpakkam, the Fast Breeder Test Reactor, is among the projects Sarabhai initiated or established. So is the Variable Energy Cyclotron Project in Calcutta. Hyderabad received the Electronics Corporation of India Limited, and Jaduguda in Jharkhand received the Uranium Corporation of India Limited. His standing in nuclear affairs grew with his posts. In 1962 he presided over the physics section of the Indian Science Congress. From 1966 to 1971 he chaired the Atomic Energy Commission of India. Padma Bhushan came to him in 1966. In 1970 he was president of the General Conference of the I.A.E.A. in Vienna. A year later he served as vice-president of the Fourth UN Conference on the peaceful uses of atomic energy.

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• 6. Reaching Orbit

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  From 1963 until 1971, Sarabhai was founder and chairman of the Space Applications Centre. He is also remembered as the founder of the Indian Space Research Organisation. He started a project to fabricate and launch an Indian satellite. That satellite, Aryabhata, reached orbit in 1975 from a Russian cosmodrome. By then Sarabhai had been gone for several years. He did not live to watch the launch that grew from his project.

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• 7. The Last Evening

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  On the 30th of December 1971, Sarabhai planned to review the design of the SLV before leaving for Mumbai that same night. He spoke by telephone with A. P. J. Abdul Kalam. Within an hour of that conversation beginning, Sarabhai suffered a fatal cardiac arrest in Trivandrum. He was 52 years old. His body was cremated in Ahmedabad. The country recognised him again the next year, when he was awarded the Padma Vibhushan posthumously in 1972. Other honours soon followed, many of them written onto institutions and maps.

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• 8. Names Left Behind

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  Trivandrum, the city where he died, now hosts the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre. It is the lead facility of the Indian Space Research Organization for launch vehicle development, and the capital of Kerala state is its home. On his first death anniversary, the 30th of December 1972, the Indian Postal Department issued a commemorative stamp. In 1973 the International Astronomical Union decided that a lunar crater called Bessel A, in the Sea of Serenity, would be known as the Sarabhai crater. In Ahmedabad, the Vikram A Sarabhai Community Science Centre carries his name; he established it around the 1960s. ISRO named its Vikas rocket engine after him. A quiz champion, Vikram Joshi, was also named in his memory.

  His 100th birthday, the 12th of August 2019, brought several tributes at once. The Indian Space Research Organization announced the Vikram Sarabhai Journalism award in Space Science Technology and Research, for journalists who contribute to space science, applications and research. Google's Doodle for India marked the anniversary that same day. On the 26th of July 2019, a Space Museum was dedicated to him at the B M Birla Science Centre in Hyderabad. Pranav Sharma curated it. On the 30th of September 2020, ACK Media and ISRO released a book titled Vikram Sarabhai: Pioneering India's Space Programme, on Amar Chitra Katha's digital platform. In 2022 a web series called Rocket Boys fictionalized the lives of Sarabhai and Homi J. Bhabha, with Ishwak Singh playing Sarabhai. The film Rocketry: The Nambi Effect, about Nambi Narayanan, cast Rajit Kapur as Sarabhai in Hindi and Ravi Raghavendra in Tamil.

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