Dr. Homi Jehangir Bhabha, 43, is a handsome, stocky physicist from Bombay, India. He speaks precise English with a Cambridge accent, and is an accomplished painter and violinist. At 31 he became a fellow of the Britain's Royal Society, and he is now the chairman of India's Atomic Energy Comission. In new York last week week, Dr Bhabha explained how India intends to lift itself by its atomic bootstraps.
An important asset, Physicist Bhabha believes, is India's tradition of learning, "Those Brahmans who sit on their bottoms all day," he says, "are not just siting. They are thinking, and they...