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June 2002
Dr. Narinder Singh Kapany is widely acknowledged
as the father of fiber-optics, the technology behind devices from
endoscopy to high-capacity telephone lines that has changed the
medical, communications and business worlds. He was named one of
seven ‘Unsung Heroes’ by Fortune magazine in their ‘Businessmen of
the Century’ issue (Nov. 22, 1999).
Born in India and educated in England, Dr. Narinder Singh Kapany has
lived in the United States for forty-five years. 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.
His career has spanned science, entrepreneurship and management,
academia, publishing, and farming. His personal interests include
philanthropy, art collecting, and sculpting.
As a scientist, Dr. Kapany’s research and
inventions have encompassed fiber-optics communications, lasers,
biomedical instrumentation, solar energy and pollution monitoring.
He has over one hundred patents, and was a member of the National
Inventors Council. 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.
As an entrepreneur and business executive, Dr. Kapany has
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, 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 Entrepreneur & Technical Expert Program and
serving as Chief Technologist for Global Communications Business. He
three years founded K2 Optronics. Dr. Kapany has also served on the
boards of various companies. He was a member of the Young Presidents
Organization and remains a member of the World Presidents
Organization.
As an academician, Dr. Kapany 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.
As an author and lecturer, Dr. Kapany has published over 100
scientific papers and four books on opto-electronics and
entrepreneurship. He has lectured to various national and
international scientific societies.
As a philanthropist, Dr. Kapany has been very active in the academia
and the arts. In 1999, he endowed a Chair of Opto-Electronics at the
University of California, Santa Cruz. He is also trustee of the
University of California, Santa Cruz Foundation. He has served as a
trustee of the Menlo School in Menlo Park, California.
He is the founder and chairman of the Sikh Foundation, a non-profit
organization founded in 1967 having its officers in Palo Alto,
California. In collaboration with international institutions and
publishers, the Foundation runs programs in publishing high quality
books on Sikhism, endowing permanent Sikh Studies Chairs and
Fellowships in leading universities in North America and
establishing long-term and permanent Sikh art exhibits. In 1998, Dr.
Kapany endowed a Chair of Sikh Studies at the University of
California, Santa Barbara in the memory of his beloved mother – The
Kundan Kaur Kapany Chair in Sikh Studies.
In the arts, he was the prime mover and provided a major loan of
paintings for the internationally acclaimed ‘Arts of the Sikh
Kingdoms’ exhibition. The exhibition started in March 1999 at the
Victoria & Albert Museum, London, proceeded to the Asian Art Museum
of San Francisco with the Sikh Foundation as its major sponsor, and
opened in May 2000 for four months at the Royal Ontario Museum in
Canada. The exhibition followed ‘Splendors of the Punjab: Sikh Art
and Literature in 1992’ organized by Dr. Kapany in collaboration
with the Asian Art Museum and UC Berkeley to celebrate the 25th
anniversary of the Sikh Foundation.
His gift in 1999 of $500,000 to the Asian Art Museum of San
Francisco has helped them establish the first-ever permanent Sikh
Arts gallery in North America. This gallery has been named in the
honor of Dr. Kapany’s wife – The Satinder Kaur Kapany Gallery of
Sikh Arts. Over 100 historical and rare Sikh artworks and objects
have been donated by Dr. Kapany from his personal Sikh Arts
collection that are now exhibited in this permanent Sikh Arts
Gallery. He is also donating a similar number of historical and rare
Sikh artworks to the Sikh Heritage Gallery at the Smithsonian
Institution, Washington, D.C. scheduled to open on the 24th of July,
2004. Under the leadership of Dr. Kapany, the Sikh Foundation has
and continues to undertake many pioneering and most needed projects
for the Sikh community worldwide including broadening the Sikh
Studies Chairs program by endowing three more permanent Sikh Studies
Chairs in the University of California Campus (Riverside, Irvine and
Berkeley). In order to truly broaden the Sikh Studies program, Dr.
Kapany is also currently negotiating a Sikh Studies Chair with the
San Jose State University. Additionally The Sikh Foundation has been
sponsoring Punjabi Language Studies program at Stanford University
and U.C. Berkeley. Finally in academia and education, currently
business plans and project reports are being drawn at The Sikh
Foundation to start a world class quality Sikh High School that will
aim to produce the Sikh leaders for tomorrow. This project is
currently on the drawing board. In the Arts, plans are underway at
The Sikh Foundation to inaugurate the Sikh Heritage Gallery in July,
2004 at the Smithsonian Institution. Additionally Dr. Kapany is
trying to negotiate an agreement with the Victoria & Albert Museum,
London to endow a permanent annual lecture series on Sikh Arts. The
Sikh Foundation also hopes to embark upon a long-term and consistent
public relations program to counter the current problem of mistaken
identity of the Sikhs in America sometime in the near future. This
has led to several hatecrimes on Sikh Americans following the tragic
events of September 11th
Lastly The Sikh Foundation recently partnered with a group of Sikhs
in Toronto, Canada to organize the first-ever Sikh Film Festival.
As an artist, Dr. Kapany has created 40 "dynoptic" sculptures, which
were first, displayed in a one-man show at the Exploratorium of the
Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco in 1972. Since then, the
collection has been viewed at museums and art galleries in Chicago,
Monterey, Palo Alto, and Stanford.
Dr. Kapany lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife,
Satinder. His son, Rajinder, is a hi-tech executive; and his
daughter, Kiran, is an attorney and a film maker.
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