India: National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS)
About Us
In developing the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) we were guided by Abraham Flexner when he proposed the creation of the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton. Flexner pithily expressed his views that the Institute “… should be small, its staff and students or scholars should be few, the administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate; the members of the teaching staff while freed from the waste of time involved in administrative work, should freely participate in decisions involving the quality and direction of its activities; the living conditions should represent a marked improvement over contemporary academic conditions… its subjects should be fundamental in character, and it should develop gradually…”. The founder of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research , Homi Bhabha, looked upon the Institute not merely as a place for doing good physics but as an instrument for growing science and scientific culture in India. TIFR’s research activities in physics, mathematics, biology and other areas are well known. Somewhat less known is the fact that it has helped to create a number of other institutions. In the last 15 years alone,
TIFR has directly or indirectly catalyzed the formation of six other institutions, the National Centre for Software Technology (NCST, Mumbai and Bangalore), the Society for Applied Microwave Engineering and Electronic Research (SAMEER, Mumbai and Chennai), the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (Pune), the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (Mumbai), the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (Pune) and the National Centre for Biological Sciences (Bangalore). The last three in the above list have been set up directly under the umbrella of TIFR and are governed by its Council of Management.
