Raja Ramanna, 79, Leader of India’s Nuclear Weapons Program
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Raja Ramanna, architect of India’s nuclear weapons program, died Friday in Bangalore. He was 79.
As director of the government-run research center in Bombay, Ramanna headed the team that built and tested India’s first atomic bomb in the western state of Rajasthan in 1974.
Born on January 28, 1925, Ramanna attended college in Madras and earned a doctorate in atomic energy from the University of London.
A protege of Homi Bhabha, the scientist who started India’s nuclear power development in the 1950s, Ramanna became known as the “architect of In dia’s nuclear program” after the 1974 test.
Ramanna was later appointed scientific adviser to the Defense Ministry and head of the Department of Atomic Energy.
In 1986, he was chairman of the director general’s scientific advisory committee at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria.
A skilled pianist, Ramanna also was passionate about Western and Indian classical music and wrote a book titled “Structure of Music in Raga and Western Systems” in 1993.
