"Who got Bhabha's Office?" An early history of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research by Dr. Indira Chowdhury at Teen Murti House, Teen Murti Marg > 3pm on 9th September 2011

Time : 3:00 pm

Entry : Free (Seating on First-Come First-Served basis)

Place : Seminar Room, First Floor, Library Building, Nehru Memorial Museum & Library ( NMML ), Teen Murti House, Teen Murti Marg, New Delhi
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Event Details : The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library invites you to a Public Lecture, “Who got Bhabha’s Office?” An early history of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research’ by Dr. Indira Chowdhury, Centre for Public History, Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology, Bengaluru.
The history of science in India has developed along two distinctive trajectories: one that sets out to explore the lives of Indian scientists and their discoveries through biographies and the other that investigates the relationship between modern science and colonialism. The first, often hagiographic in approach, is a romantic quest for the heroes of science while the second and more recent trend, is often a censorious mission of evaluating science as yet another dubious gift of colonialism. More recent interventions however, have attempted to understand the history of scientific institution-building from within a larger socio-historical framework. This presentation demonstrates ways in which we might frame questions that relate to the institutional history of science in India.
In this presentation, I shall be drawing on my experience in setting up the Archives of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Science in Mumbai. This presentation forms part of a larger project of mapping the institutional history of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research which was founded by the physicist Homi Bhabha in 1945 – two years before Indian independence. While setting up the Archives of the Institute Homi Bhabha built, it soon became clear that one needed a larger framework within which to map and understand the institutional collection – correspondence files, reports, technical papers and photographs. There was also a need to create other resources that could tap into the collective memory of the Institution to understand, access, and assess the kind of institution that Homi Bhabha had aimed to create. This presentation delves into the archival experience to present ways in which we might trace the complicated route that modern science took in India. I shall use as examples two forthcoming publications that use the resources of the TIFR Archives – one on Homi Bhabha called A Masterful Spirit: Homi Bhabha 1909-1966 (Penguin, 2010) and the other titled, Growing the Tree of Science: Homi Bhabha and the creation of TIFR (Forthcoming).

The Speaker : Indira Chowdhury heads the Centre for Public History at the Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore. Formerly Professor of English at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, she has a PhD in History from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.
Her book The Frail Hero and Virile History (OUP, 1998) was awarded the Tagore Prize (Rabindra Puraskar) in 2001. She also compiled the Supplement of Indian English words published in the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary in 1995. In 2004, she published The First Promise – a translation of a major Bengali novel into English. She has worked as a Consultant Archivist to several Institutions including Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai and IIT Kanpur.
In 2006 she set up Archival Resources for Contemporary History which set up the Archives of the Naandi Foundation, Hyderabad and Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, Hyderabad. In 2010 ARCH reinvented itself as ARCH@Srishti which continues to work with clients across the country. Present clients include IIM Calcutta and the Bangalore Environmental Trust.

Related Events : Talks | History | Science
"Who got Bhabha's Office?" An early history of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research by Dr. Indira Chowdhury at Teen Murti House, Teen Murti Marg > 3pm on 9th September 2011 "Who got Bhabha's Office?" An early history of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research by Dr. Indira Chowdhury at Teen Murti House, Teen Murti Marg > 3pm on 9th September 2011 Reviewed by DelhiEvents on Friday, September 09, 2011 Rating: 5

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