Vainu Bappu was born in Chennai on August 10, 1927 as the only child of Manali Kukuzhi and Sunanna Bappu.
Vainu Bappu not only excelled in studies but took active part in debates, sports and other extracurricular activities.
However, his father exposed him to astronomy from early age so astronomy became his passion.
During his college years, he had published papers on variable star observations.
Soon Vainu Bappu joined the prestigious Harvard University on a scholarship after obtaining his Masters degree in Physics from Madras University.
Within a few months of his arrival at Harvard, Vainu Bappu discovered a comet.
Later International Astronomical Union named the comet Bappu-Bok-Newkirk, after Bappu and his colleagues Bart Bok and Gordon Newkirk who worked out the details of this comet.
Vainu Bappu Scientific Research
He completed his Ph.D. in 1952 and joined the Palomar observatory on the prestigious Carnegie Fellowship.
There, he and Colin Wilson discovered a relationship between the luminosity of particular kinds of stars and some of their spectral characteristics.
This important observation came to be known as the Bappu-Wilson effect and is used to determine the luminosity and distance of these kind of stars.
Later he returned to India in 1953 and he set up the Uttar Pradesh State Observatory in Nainital.
In 1960 he left Nainital to take over as the Director of the Kodaikanal Observatory. He modernised the facilities there and it is today an active centre of astronomical research.
Soon he realised that the Kodaikanal Observatory was inadequate for making stellar observations and started searching for a good site for a stellar observatory.
He designed, fabricated and installed a totally indigenous 2.3 meter telescope in Kavalur, Tamil Nadu.
Later the Management of Observatory named both the telescope and the observatory after him when it was commissioned in 1986.
Astronomical Society of the Pacific awarded him the Donhoe Comet-Medal in 1949.
Belgium Academy of Sciences elected Vainu Bappu as Honorary Foreign Fellow.
He was an Honorary Member of the American Astronomical Society.
Vainu Bappu was elected President of the International Astronomical Union in 1979.
He died on August 19, 1982 in Munich, Germany.
The Vainu Bappu Observatory is one of the main observatories of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics
Modern Astronomers regarded him as the father of modern Indian astronomy.