Homi Jehangir Bhabha was the son of Jehangir Hormusji Bhabha and Meheran Pandey; his aunt Meherbai was married to Sir Dorab Tata. In 1927, Bhabha went to study engineering at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, before being permitted by his father to switch to physics in 1930. Bhabha's main research at Cambridge concerned quantum electrodynamics, and among other things, suggested the existence of heavier electrons.

In 1939, when war broke out, Bhabha was in India on vacation in India, which made a return to England impossible. He therefore joined the special cosmic ray research unit, created for him by the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust, at the Indian Institute of Science at Bangalore in 1940. He was elected fellow of the Royal Society in 1941. In June 1945, Bhabha was appointed founder director of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. Bhabha's note to the prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, on the organization of atomic research in India, resulted in the setting up of the atomic energy commission of India in August 1948, with Bhabha as its chairman. He presided over the international conference on developing peaceful uses of atomic energy, organized by the United Nations in Geneva in 1955.

Bhabha died in an air crash on Mont Blanc on 24 January 1966 on his way to a meeting of the scientific advisory committee of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.