Raja Ramanna, 79; Headed India’s Nuclear Weapons Program

Raja Ramanna, 79, the architect of India’s nuclear weapons program, died early Friday at a Bombay hospital, where he had been undergoing treatment for an intestinal ailment. The cause of death was not reported.

As director of the government-run research center in Bombay, Ramanna headed the team that built and tested India’s first atomic bomb in the western state of Rajasthan in 1974.

Born in Bangalore on Jan. 28, 1925, Ramanna attended college in Madras and earned a doctorate in atomic energy from the University of London.

Ramanna was a protege of Homi Bhabha, the scientist who began India’s nuclear power development in the 1950s. He later was scientific advisor to the Defense Ministry and head of the Department of Atomic Energy. In 1986, he was chairman of the scientific advisory committee at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.

A skilled pianist, Ramanna was passionate about Western and Indian classical music and wrote a book, “Structure of Music in Raga and Western Systems,” in 1993.