Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai

Overview

The Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai is a deemed university and a national research institution established under the aegis of the Department of Atomic Energy, Government of India. TIFR carries out basic research in physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, computer science and science education. The institute also has campuses in Pune, Bangalore and Hyderabad. TIFR was set up on June 1, 1945 after Homi J. Bhabha requested Sir Dorabji Tata for financial assistance to set up a scientific research institute with support from JRD Tata, then chairman of the Tata Group and Homi Bhabha was appointed its first director. The institute was initially operated within the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore campus and later shifted to a bungalow on Pedder Road, Mumbai. The institute was later moved to its Colaba campus in 1954, the campus was designed by the Chicago architect, Helmuth Bartsch and inaugurated by prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru on 15 January 1962. TIFR attained the official deemed university status in June 2002. Today, there are also the following School of Natural Sciences centres set up under the TIFR umbrella: 1. Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (HBCSE), Mumbai 2. International Centre for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS), Bengaluru 3. National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bengaluru 4. National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA), Pune 5. TIFR Centre for Interdisciplinary Sciences (TCIS), Hyderabad

Campus

The beautifully landscaped TIFR campus hosts spacious green lawns. The indoors include a library with more than 1,00,000 books and journals in its collection; the library is fully computerised and provides microfilm, microfiche, audio-video and compact disc reading facilities, a central computing facility together with individually assigned personal computers and workstations for computation, control and monitoring of experiments and data analysis, liquid Helium facility for very low temperature experimental studies, and a large workshop and glass blowing section for manufacturing high precision instruments. TIFR also has three lecture halls - AG66, AG69 and AG80, an extensive collection of modern art including several pieces by M.F. Hussain and V.S Gaitonde, three canteens - the West canteen that serves continental food, the East Canteen that prepares Indian food, and another canteen located within the housing complex called the Jagdish Canteen. The TIFR campus boasts a network connected to the world grid through high speed communication networks.