 |
Narinder KapaniPhysicist, one of the founders of fiber optics.
Date of Birth: 31.10.1927
Country:  India |
Content:
Biography of Narinder Kapany
Narinder Singh Kapany, a physicist and one of the pioneers of fiber optics, was born on October 31, 1927, in Moghul, India. He completed his college education at Dehradun College, India, in 1948, and obtained his degree in Imperial College of Science and Technology in London in 1952. In 1954, he received his doctorate from the University of London.
From 1955 to 1957, Kapany worked at the Optical Institute of the University of Rochester, and from 1957 to 1961, he worked at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. From 1961 to 1973, he served as the President and Director of Research at Optics Technology Incorporation in Belmont, and since 1973, he has been the President of Kaptron Incorporation.
Contributions to Optics
Kapany has made significant contributions to the fields of geometric and physical optics, interferential microscopy, photoelectronics, photography, lasers, and information processing. His interest in fiber optics began when he was challenged by a teacher who claimed that light only travels in straight lines through reflection.
In 1951, Kapany, along with Dutch scientist Abraham van Heel and British scientists Harold Hopkins, independently began developing glass fibers that could transmit images. These fibers were needed for gastroscopes and other medical equipment. However, the problem arose when the light signal launched through the ordinary glass fiber quickly dispersed in the surrounding medium and did not reach the end of the fiber. Kapany proposed using a reflective coating for the glass fiber. He suggested making both the core and the cladding of the fiber from glass with different refractive indices. The core should be as transparent as possible, while the cladding should act as a mirror. Kapany successfully fused the glass fiber with reduced losses. This idea proved to be excellent, and the principle of transmitting light through a dual-layered fiber optic still applies today.
In 1956, Kapany experimentally invented "fiber optics." He developed a bundle of flexible glass rods coated with a reflective material that could transmit images from one end to another without distortion and with minimal loss of light. He conducted research on the transmission of waveguide modes through small-diameter fibers, expanded the spectral characteristics of fiber optics into the infrared spectrum, conducted experiments with laser fibers and fiber amplifiers, and investigated image transmission through fiber bundles. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
