Scientis Rajagopala Chidambaram.
| Photo Credit: PTI
Rajagopala Chidambaram, 88, former Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, and involved with both of India’s nuclear tests, in 1974 and in 1998, died at Jaslok Hospital in Mumbai on Saturday. He was also the longest serving Principal Scientific Advisor (PSA) to the Indian government from 2002-2018.
An atomic energy scientist who spent his whole career with the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and its affiliated agencies, Dr. Chidambaram was the nuclear scientist whose professional history was intertwined with the history of India’s nuclear ambitions.
In 1974, he was part of an operation, codenamed ‘Smiling Buddha’, which carried out amidst great secrecy a “peaceful nuclear test” at Pokhran, Rajasthan. This made India the sixth country to test a nuclear device, although it invited condemnation, particularly from Canada and the United States. The plutonium for the test came from the Cirus reactor at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Mumbai, which was supplied by Canada, and heavy water from the U.S.
In 1998, as the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, he led a similar operation, again at Pokhran, to detonate four nuclear fission and one nuclear fusion bomb on May 11 of that year. Called Operation Shakti, this was a more explicitly military test and invited international sanctions, and six nuclear tests by Pakistan in the same month. The second Pokhran test, which exploded bombs far more powerful than those in 1974, underlined India’s credentials as a military nuclear power, but the denial of critical technologies needed for civilian programme has critics, to this day, debating its secondary impact. Nuclear sanctions following this were only effectively lifted after the Indo-U.S. civilian nuclear deal championed by the late former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and U.S. President George Bush.
A recipient of the Padma Shri (1975) and Padma Vibushan (1999), Dr. Chidambaram contributed significantly to condensed matter physics, nuclear energy, and strategic technologies. As Chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee to the Cabinet, he championed advancements in energy security, materials science, supercomputing, and nanotechnology, according to a statement form the Office of the PSA.
“Dr Chidambaram’s unparalleled contributions to India’s scientific and strategic capabilities and his visionary leadership in science and technology will forever be remembered,” the DAE said in a statement.
Congress leader Jairam Ramesh described him as among the titans of Indian science and technology in a post on social media platform X. “He was a man of great learning and erudition in diverse disciplines. Meeting and listening to him was always a deep education. Behind that steely exterior, he had a wonderful sense of humour. Dr. Chidambaram was intellectually very active till his end. People like him are very, very rare,” Mr. Ramesh said.
As the PSA, Dr. Chidambaram stressed on the importance of combining basic research and technological applications through an approach called “directed basic research”.
His tenure as PSA saw the launch of several initiatives, including the Rural Technology Action Group (RuTAG), which empowered rural communities through innovative technologies; the Society for Electronic Transactions and Security (SETS) to contribute towards advancing India’s cybersecurity and hardware security infrastructure; and the National Knowledge Network (NKN) to connect educational and research institutions across the country addressing issues with “Access to Knowledge”, a press note from the Office of the PSA said.
Published – January 04, 2025 10:01 am IST
