Person · physicist & ISRO founder · India
Vikram Sarabhai
Also known as Vikram Sarabhai, Vikram Ambalal Sarabhai, Dr. Vikram Sarabhai
Ahmedabad-born physicist (1919–1971) educated at Cambridge, who founded the Physical Research Laboratory at Ahmedabad in 1947, the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad in 1961, and the Indian National Committee for Space Research in 1962 — the committee that became the Indian Space Research Organisation in 1969 under his chairmanship. He designed India's space programme around application rather than prestige: satellite television for education, remote sensing for agriculture, weather for farmers. He died at Kovalam in 1971 at fifty-two, before any of the three major satellites he had planned had flown.
- Date
- 1919–1971
- Function
- Science & medicine
- Tradition
- Standard reference and biographical literature; contemporary chronicles and institutional records as applicable.
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Worth knowing
The Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station on the Kerala coast — opened 1963, operated jointly with NASA and the Soviet Union — was built on the land of the Mary Magdalene Church, which the local bishop donated after Sarabhai personally asked him. Sarabhai also co-founded Nehru Foundation for Development and the Darpana dance academy with his wife Mrinalini Sarabhai in 1949, which placed him inside the modern dance geography of Ahmedabad as well.
About the place
Placed at Ahmedabad where PRL and IIM-A are located.
Connections (6)
- FoundedAhmedabad / Karnāvatī / Āshāval
Vikram Sarabhai founded the Physical Research Laboratory at Ahmedabad in November 1947 as a cosmic-ray and theoretical physics institute, operated from the Ahmedabad Education Society's premises until the current M.G. Road campus opened in 1954. He also founded the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad in 1961 with Harvard Business School collaboration, and the Nehru Foundation for Development with his sister Mridula in 1965. The three institutions together made Ahmedabad — a textile-mill city until the 1940s — one of the subcontinent's major research cities within one generation.
- Institutional successor ofHomi J. Bhabha
Vikram Sarabhai succeeded Homi Bhabha as chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission after Bhabha's death in the January 1966 air crash, and inherited the atomic programme Bhabha had designed; he added to it the space programme through the INCOSPAR of 1962 that became ISRO in 1969. Sarabhai's own emphasis — satellite television for education, remote sensing for agriculture, weather for farmers — was deliberately distinct from Bhabha's reactor-focused programme, and shaped Indian space activity for the following decades.
- FoundedThumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS)
Vikram Sarabhai founded the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station on the Kerala coast in 1963 as India's first rocket launch site, sited exactly on the geomagnetic equator for upper-atmosphere studies. He personally obtained the land from the local Catholic bishop at Thumba — cycling to the bishop's residence and receiving the grant the same evening — and the Mary Magdalene church on the site became mission control for the first Nike-Apache launch on 21 November 1963. The site is now the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre and remains active alongside Sriharikota.
- Founded bySatish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota
Vikram Sarabhai founded the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota in 1971 as India's primary rocket launch complex, extending beyond the earlier TERLS equatorial facility at Thumba. The 1972 handover of ISRO's chairmanship from Sarabhai to Dhawan after Sarabhai's death followed the site's founding; the complex was renamed for Dhawan in 2002.
- Founder ofThumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS)
Vikram Sarabhai founded the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station in 1963 on the magnetic equator near Thiruvananthapuram. The first sounding rocket was ferried to the site on a bicycle; launch control sat in St Mary Magdalene Church, converted into INCOSPAR's first office. In 1972 the station was renamed the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, ISRO's propulsion arm.
- Founder ofISRO Headquarters, Bengaluru
Vikram Sarabhai was the founding chairman of ISRO, 1969-71.