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Prof. P D Bhavsar

Astronautical Society of India ARYABHATA AWARD 1999 Presented to Prof. Praful Daly Bhavsar In recognition of his contribution to Promotion of Astronautics in India March 2003 Bangalore   (K.Kasturirangan) President
	Dr. Praful Bhavsar was born on August 17, 1926. He received his Doctorate in Physics from Gujarat University in 1958 for his research in Cosmic Rays at the Physical Research Laboratory. Dr. Bhavsar was a member of the faculty in the Dept. of Physics, University of Minnesota before joining Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS), as a Project Scientist to work on vapour cloud sounding rocket experiments. He was responsible for the first sounding rocket launch form TERLS. He conducted extensive research on Cosmic Rays, Solar-Proton events, Aurora and Aurora X-rays and the dynamics of upper atmosphere. He developed various instruments for ground, balloon and rocket based experiments. Dr. Bhavsar held several important positions in space research activities for the Indian Space programme. He was the Member-Secretary of the Indian National Committee for Space Research, which laid the foundation for space research activities in the country. He led the team at the Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad for successfully realising the first operational remote sensing programme. As project Director, he was responsible for establishing the rocket launch facility at Balasore, Orissa and for initiating the launch of meteo-rockets. He was the Programme Director for the Indian Middle Atmosphere programme of ISRO and as Co-Chairman, steered the MST Radar project at Gadanki. Dr Bhavsar was the Programme Director of the IRS Utilization programme responsible for commencement of several user friendly remote sensing application programmes, which laid the foundation for the present remote sensing applications in the country. He has 40 publications to his credit. Dr Praful Daly Bhavsar is presented the ARYABHATA Award for the year 1999 in recognition of his lifetime achievement in the area of Astronautics.