Vikram Sarabhai, in full Vikram Ambalal Sarabhai, (born August 12, 1919, Ahmadabad, India died December 30, 1971, Kovalam), Indian physicist and industrialist who initiated space research and helped develop nuclear power in India. Sarabhai was born into a family of industrialists. He attended Gujarat College, Ahmadabad, but later shifted to the University of Cambridge, England, where he took his tripos in natural sciences in 1940. World War II forced him to return to India, where he undertook research in cosmic rays under physicist Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (Bengaluru). In 1945 he returned to Cambridge