Prem Nath Thapar CIE, ICS (13 April 1903– 1969) was a member of the Indian Civil Service in the Punjab region during India's transformation from a British colony to independent nation state.
Thapar joined the India Civil Service (ICS) in 1926 after graduating with a Bachelor of Arts from Oxford University.
[1] With the allocation of Lahore to Pakistan in 1947, this position became moot and Thapar found himself overseeing the first planned city in India.
Their initial proposal of architect to the Punjab government in December 1949 was Albert Mayer, an American town planner who teamed with Matthew Nowicki to plan the new city.
The death of Nowicki in an August 1950 plane crash led Mayer to withdraw from the project and caused Thapar and Varma to go to Europe in search of a new architect in the fall of 1950.
On the recommendation of Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew, who were eventually hired to design housing for the city, they went to Paris to interview Le Corbusier in November 1950.
Thapar's initial reaction to the design was negative, because the high-rise structure and reliance on elevators was incompatible with the typical Indian style of living.
[11] He served on the Board of the International Rice Research Institute from 1964 to 1966,[12] and as the president of the India Agricultural Universities Association from 1967 to 1969.