Episode 62: Vikram Sarabhai

Amrita Shah Vikram Sarabhai  is unanimously accepted across
India as the "father" of its space program. Not really known well
outside India, he died suddenly and prematurely at age of 52 in
1971. He had studied cosmic ray physics and gained his PHD from
Cambridge in 1947 the same year India became an independent nation.
 He spent the rest of his life implementing a vision that the
prosperity of India and all of its people lay in science. The
scientific institutions he built still play key role in India
today. Convincing the Indian population that they had the
intellectual capacity to rebuild India with their own hands is
perhaps his lasting legacy. The most scholarly biography on his
eventful life is Vikram Sarabhai - A life by Amrita Shah. A review
of the book is available here. This episode is a recording with
Amrita Shah conducted fittingly at the Indian Institute of Science
in Bangalore, where Vikram Sarabhai studied physics under C V Raman
who in 1930 had won the Nobel Prize for physics.
http://youtu.be/5itIEpIQ_MM