Indira Chowdhury, Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology
University of Pennsylvania
Time: 12:00pm to 1:30pm
Location: Center for the Advanced Study of India, 3600 Market Street, Suite 560 (5th floor)
Long before India became independent, it was clear that as a newly emerging nation it had to make a place for science, given the imperatives of education, industry, infrastructure and defense. The question was how to imagine science; how to design the institution in which it would be housed. The solution that Homi Bhabha hit upon when he started the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in 1945 had many surprising features, some of which still shape science in India. One of its most interesting features was a robust internationalism whose other side was the creation of an elsewhere in an India weighed down by colonial structures. Dr. Chowdhury forms part of a larger project of mapping the institutional history of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and will draw on her recent publication A Masterful Spirit: Homi Bhabha 1909-1966 (Penguin, 2010) and forthcoming book, Growing the Tree of Science: Homi Bhabha and the creation of TIFR, both of which use the resources of the TIFR Archives.
Please RSVP by Monday, April 25 – seating is limited
email: casi@sas.upenn.edu
tel: 215.746.3159
casi.ssc.upenn.edu