Narinder Singh Kapany

Narinder Singh Kapany (31 October 1926 – 4 December 2020) was an Indian-American physicist best known for his work on fiber optics.

Kapany is a pioneer in the field of fiber optics, known for coining and popularising the term.

Fortune named him one of seven "Unsung Heroes of the 20th Century" for his Nobel Prize-deserving invention.

He was awarded India's second highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan, posthumously in 2021.

He served as an Indian Ordnance Factories Service (IOFS) officer.

He was also offered the post of Scientific Adviser to the Defence Minister of India, by the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru.

Kapany was born on 31 October 1926, in Moga, Punjab to Sundar Singh and Kundan Kaur.

He was from a Sikh Khatri family of Sodhi Clan and were landlords.

He completed his schooling in Dehradun and went on to graduate from Agra University.

He served as an Indian Ordnance Factories Service officer, before going to Imperial College London in 1952 to work on a Ph.D. degree in optics from the University of London, which he obtained in 1955.

At Imperial College, Kapany worked with Harold Hopkins on transmission through fibers, achieving good image transmission through a large bundle of optical fibers for the first time in 1953.

Optical fibers had been tried for image transmission before, but Hopkins and Kapany's technique allowed much better image quality than could previously be achieved.

This, combined with the almost-simultaneous development of optical cladding by Dutch scientist Bram van Heel, helped jump start the new field of fiber optics.

Kapany coined the term 'fiber optics' in an article in Scientific American in 1960, wrote the first book about the new field, and was the new field's most prominent researcher, writer, and spokesperson.

Kapany's research and work encompassed fiber-optics communications, lasers, biomedical instrumentation, solar energy and pollution monitoring.

He had over 120 patents, and was a member of the National Inventors Council.

He was an International Fellow of numerous scientific societies including the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Optical Society of America, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

As an entrepreneur and business executive, Kapany specialized in the processes of innovation and the management of technology and technology transfer.

In 1960, he founded Optics Technology Inc. and was chairman of the board, president, and director of research for twelve years.

In 1967 the company went public with numerous corporate acquisitions and joint-ventures in the United States and abroad.

In 1973, Kapany founded Kaptron Inc. and was president and CEO until 1990 when he sold the company to AMP Incorporated.

For the next nine years, Kapany was an AMP Fellow, heading the Entrepreneur & Technical Expert Program and serving as chief technologist for global communications business.

He founded K2 Optronics.

He also served on the boards of various companies.

He was a member of the Young Presidents Organization and later a member of the World Presidents Organization.

As an academic, Kapany taught and supervised research activity of postgraduate students.

He was a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

He founded the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurial Development (CIED) at UCSC and served as director for seven years.

At Stanford University, he was a visiting scholar in the Physics Department and consulting professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering.

As an author and lecturer, Kapany published over 100 scientific papers and four books on opto-electronics and entrepreneurship.

As a philanthropist, Kapany was active in education and the arts.

He was the founding chairman of the Sikh Foundation and a major funder of its activities for over 50 years.

In collaboration with international institutions and publishers, the Foundation runs programs in publishing, academia and the arts.

In 1998, Kapany endowed a Chair of Sikh Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

His gift in 1999 of $500,000 to the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco established a gallery in its new building displaying the works he donated from his collection of Sikh art.

In 1999, he endowed a Chair of Optoelectronics at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Again in 2012, he established the Narinder Kapany Endowed Chair in Entrepreneurship at UC Santa Cruz.

He was a trustee of the University of California, Santa Cruz Foundation.

He also served as a trustee of the Menlo School in Menlo Park, California.

As an art collector, Kapany specialised in Sikh art.