New Delhi, Feb. 22 -- Vikram Sarabhai, the renaissance man in the starlit Indian business pantheon, stands apart as the most enigmatic and avant garde figure of the 20th century. While his contemporaries focussed on building traditional business empires, Sarabhai pursued a radically different vision-one that merged scientific advancement, social progress and entrepreneurial innovation, decades ahead of their time.

To understand Sarabhai the man is to understand a mind that refused to be boxed into conventional categories. Born into one of Gujarat's most enlightened and wealthy business families in 1919, he could have easily settled into running his father Ambalal Sarabhai's many mills. Instead, he chose to pursue physics in Cambridge, fo...