Vainu Bappu
Vainu Bappu is considered the father of modern Indian astronomy, who largely contributed to the establishment of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics. His is a case of like father like son! Bappu was born in 1927 to a senior astronomer in the Nizamiah Observatory, Hyderabad. Being a keen amateur astronomer, Bappu published various papers on variable star observations. After obtaining his Masters degree in Physics from Madras University, he joined the Harvard University on a scholarship.
At Harvard, Vainu Bappu discovered a comet named ‘Bappu-Bok-Newkirk’, after Bappu and his colleagues Bart Bok and Gordon Newkirk. He completed his Ph.D in 1952 and joined the Palomar observatory on the prestigious Carnegie Fellowship. There, Bappu and Colin Wilson discovered a relationship between the luminosity of particular kinds of stars and some of their spectral characteristics, which is today known as the Bappu-Wilson effect.
On his return to India, Bappu was appointed to head a team of astronomers to build an observatory at Nainital. He worked towards building a large indigenous optical telescope and a research observatory in India led to the founding of an optical observatory of Kavalur. In 1979, he was nominated as the President of the International Astronomical Union. Due to his efforts, India’s largest optical telescope, the Vainu Bappu Observatory was established in 1986, just after his death!
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