Narinder S. Kapany
About Optica
In Memoriam: Narinder S. Kapany, 1926-2020
04 December 2020
Narinder S. Kapany, OSA Fellow and pioneer in the development of fiber optics, passed away on 4 December 2020 at the age of 94. Kapany was a physicist and entrepreneur who was known as the “Father of Fiber Optics” for his work to demonstrate the transmission of images through optical fiber bundles. Kapany collaborated with Professor Harold Hopkins at Imperial College London and their research was published in Nature in 1954. In addition to his research contributions, Kapany was known for his enthusiastic promotion of fiber optic technology, devoting time to demonstrate its benefits and potential to academic, corporate, and government leaders.
Kapany was born on 31 October 1926 in Moga, India, and earned his undergraduate degree from Agra University. He moved to London and did graduate research in optics at the Imperial College London. He received his doctorate in 1955 and joined the faculty of the University of Rochester that same year. In 1960, Kapany started his first business, Optics Technology, in Palo Alto, California, and began teaching at the University of California (UC) Berkeley. Kapany enjoyed working with students and went onto hold positions at UC Santa Cruz and Stanford University. He was relentless in his pursuit to revolutionize communications and would continue to commercialize fiber optic technology by founding numerous businesses during his career including, Kaptron (1973) and K2 Optronics (2000).
Kapany married his wife, Satinder Kaur, in 1954, and they moved to Rochester, New York, in 1955. Narinder and Satinder would go onto be married for 62 years and raise two children, son Raj and daughter Kiran. During his career, Kapany published extensively and was a contender for the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2009, which was awarded to Dr. Charles Kao. Kapany was made an OSA Fellow in 1961. Kapany was a practicing Sikh and devoted to preserving his heritage. He held one of the world’s largest collections of Sikh art and established the Sikh Foundation in 1967. In honor of his mother, Kapany endowed the Kundan Kaur Kapany Chair of Sikh Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He endowed a Chair of Opto-Electronics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1999.
Kapany is survived by his two children and many grandchildren. OSA and scientific community mourns the loss of Narinder Kapany.
