Narinder Singh Kapany (1926 – 2020) was an Indian-American physicist best known for his work on fiber optics.
He is credited with inventing fiber optics, and is considered the 'Father of Fiber Optics'.
Kapany coined the term 'fiber optics' in an article in Scientific American in 1960, wrote the first book about the new field, and was the new field's most prominent researcher, writer, and spokesperson.
He was awarded India's second highest civilian award the Padma Vibhushan posthumously in 2021.
He went to Imperial College London in 1952 to work on a Ph.D. degree in optics from the University of London, which he obtained in 1955. There he worked with Harold Hopkins on transmission through fibres, achieving good image transmission through a large bundle of optical fibres for the first time in 1953.
As a philanthropist, Kapany was active in education and the arts. He was the founding chairman of the Sikh Foundation and a major funder of its activities for over 50 years.
In November 1999, he was identified by Fortune as one of the seven "unsung heroes who greatly influenced life in the twentieth century" in the "Businessmen of the Century" issue. Dr. Kapany was also on Time Magazine's list of top ten scientists of the 20th century in Time's last issue of 1999.