Narinder Singh Kapany is born on 31 October 1926 to a Sikh family in Moga, Punjab, India. He is an Indian-born American Sikh physicist known for his work in fibre optics. He was named as one of the seven ‘Unsung Heroes’ by the Fortune magazine in their ‘Businessmen of the Century’ issue (1999-11-22). He is also known as “Father of Fiber Optics”. The term fibre optics was coined by Narinder Singh Kapany in 1956. He is a former IOFS officer.
A graduate of Agra University in India, he completed advanced studies in optics at the Imperial College of Science and Technology, London and received his Ph.D. from the University of London in 1955. He subsequently moved to the University of Rochester and then to the Illinois Institute of Technology to continue his research and inventions in the areas of fiber-optics communication, lasers, biomedical instrumentation, solar energy and pollution monitoring.
Dr. Kapany is not only a physicist but a businessman, an entrepreneur, a philanthropist and a sculptor all rolled into one. He founded Optics Technology Inc., Kaptron Inc., and K2 Optronics undertaking research and innovation in the field of fiber optics. He specialized in the process of management of technology and technology transfer through his entrepreneurial ventures.
He has received many awards including ‘The Excellence 2000 Award’ from the USA Pan-Asian American Chamber of Commerce in 1998. He is a Fellow of numerous scientific societies including the British Royal Academy of Engineering, the Optical Society of America, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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, Dr. Kapany founded Kaptron Inc. and was President and CEO until 1990 when he sold the company to AMP Incorporated. For the next nine years, Dr. Kapany was an AMP Fellow, heading the Intrapreneur & Technical Expert Program and serving as Chief Technologist for Global Communications Business. He founded K2 Optronics.
Dr. Kapany, as an academician has taught and supervised research activity of postgraduate students. He was a Regents Professor at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB), and at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). He was also Director of the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurial Development (CIED) at UCSC for seven years. At Stanford University, he has been a Visiting Scholar in the Physics Department and Consulting Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering.
