co-inventor of optical fiber dies at 94 – Legacy.com

Narinder Traps was a physicist known as the “father of optical optics”, who was one of the inventors of optical fiber technology.

Creating – and naming – a new technology

Kapani, a native of India, was determined from an early age to learn how to bend light. His search took him to graduate school in London, where he began working with Professor Harold Hopkins on his project, which tried to transmit light through flexible glass fibers. They became a powerful team: Hopkins provided the theory, and Kapani decided how to put that theory into practice, and together they were among the first to create optical fibers. Kapani named the new technology in a 1

960 article he wrote for Scientific American. He also; they became enthusiastic promoters of their creation, wrote academic reports, and showed business and government interests how they can use the now indispensable technology. Today, optical technology is crucial for computers and telecommunications, as well as for medical imaging. In later years, Kapani settled in the United States and began a number of businesses, as well as teaching at colleges, including the Institute of Technology in Illinois and the University of California, Santa Cruz and Berkeley.

Traps for the beginning of his interest in light

“I was just a premature kid attending a physics college when one day the professor told us that light ‘always travels in a straight line.’ But that can’t be true, I thought – sometimes it has to bend. ”From a 2009 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle

A bow to Narinder Kapany

A wonderful memory of an innovative scientist who, by the time I met him, had become an attentive and generous treasure and talent contributor to @ucsc. A supporter of STEM, Kapani also saw the role of the top publication in supporting South Asian culture in the United States. Https://t.co/vzTiClYThE

– Steve Torsett (@SteveThorsett) January 8, 2021

One of the very short list of people you can thank for the technical capacity that allows high speed internet and everything related to it. https://t.co/4UjolcTRun

– Edward J. Renehan Jr. (@Ed_Renehan) January 7, 2021

Complete obituary: New York Times