It's the birthday of Raja Ramanna, who was born in 1928 in Tiptur, a town in the state of Karnataka, India. Ramanna earned a master's degree in physics from Bombay University. In 1952 he travelled to Britain, where, at King's College London, he earned a PhD in nuclear physics. After conducting research at Britain's Atomic Energy Research Establishment, he returned to India to work with Homi Bhabha on the country's nuclear weapons program. When Bhabha died in 1966 in a plane crash, Ramanna took over the program. Under Ramanna's direction, India conducted its first nuclear explosion - codenamed Smiling Buddha - on 18 May 1974. Ramanna died in 2004.
