Early Life

  • 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.

    Vainu Bappu
    Vainu Bappu
  • 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.

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