Kapany is perhaps best known as the inventor of fiber optics, now a several billion dollar a year industry worldwide. Born in 1927 in Punjab, Kapany was raised in Dehradun and attended Mission School there, where one of his physics teachers famously taught him that light could only travel in a straight line, a proposition that Kapany questioned. After obtaining a B.Sc. in Physics from Agra University, Kapany pursued graduate studies in optics at the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London in 1951, where he tested his theory that light could be accurately transmitted through glass fibers.

After months of experimentation with varying types of glass, Kapany finally demonstrated that light could indeed travel through internally reflective glass fibers by using short cable lengths and a carbon arc source. Kapany obtained his doctorate from the University of London in 1955, already having been credited with developing fiber optics before the age of 30.

He began his career teaching at the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester, New York. From there he moved to Chicago to head the Optics Department of the Illinois Institute of Technology. After five years in academia, Kapany took the leap that so many Indian American scientists in his wake have taken: he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and started his first company, Optics Technology, in 1960, with the help of an early-generation venture capital firm, Draper Gaither Anderson. At that time, there were only a small handful of Indian entrepreneurs in the area, which had yet to be named Silicon Valley. The company went public in 1967. Kapany then started a second company in 1973 called Kaptron, which he sold to AMP in the late 1980s, although he stayed with the company for another decade, continuing to develop new optical components and applications.

In 2000, Kapany started yet another company to develop and manufacture highly specialized lasers with his son, Rajinder - K2Optronics, which Rajinder continues to run as CEO. Today, Kapany has over 120 patents to his name, four books, and over 100 scientific papers. He has taught at Stanford, Berkeley, and UC Santa Cruz. His easygoing demeanor and the casual, Mr. Rogers-style cardigan, plaid shirt and black sneakers ensemble he typically sports belies the fact that in its November, 1999 "Businessmen of the Century" issue, Fortune magazine named him one of the seven "unsung heroes" of American business for his invention of fiber optics.

In 1967, around the time his first company went public, Kapany founded the Sikh Foundation, one of the premier philanthropic foundations in the country devoted to the propagation of Sikh art, literature, and scholarship. At that time, Kapany believed there was a need for a philanthropic foundation devoted to educating Sikh youth about their heritage and establishing chairs of Sikh Studies at major U.S. universities. Although Sikhs had been living in California by that time for several generations, American scholars had pointed out to Kapany that the Sikhs had produced very few works of outstanding scholarship.

"That had a big impact on me at the time," Kapany recalls. "I was determined to remedy the situation by providing the impetus for scholarship in the universities and publications about Sikh art, history and literature worthy of any publisher in the U.S." To date, the Sikh Foundation has available over 70 books on Sikh art, religion, literature, history, and works for Sikh children on their heritage.

The Foundation has established fully endowed chairs of Sikh Studies at the University of California campuses at Santa Barbara, Irvine, and Riverside, and is in active negotiations for similar chairs at UC Berkeley and San Jose State University. "There is a new crop of young second and third generation Sikh American scholars coming up through the top universities in the U.S. who are interested in devoting their careers to the academic study and teaching of Sikh history, religion, and art history, and through these chairs we hope to send a message to the youth that there is a place waiting for them in academia should they chose the academic path and excel in that pursuit," he says. "We want to ensure that scholarship on Sikh subjects matches that on any religion and culture in the United States."

Kapany and his wife, Satinder, enjoy the fruits of their labors, splitting their time between their main home in Woodside, Calif.; a pied-a-terre on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco; a large walnut grove near Yuba City, Calif.; and another home in the Mayfair section of London. The Kapanys enjoy sailing and skiing in California and extended wildlife safaris during their India trips. More than anything else, however, the Kapanys enjoy the pursuit of collecting art relating to the Sikh gurus and Sikh kings, especially Maharaja Ranjit Singh.

Asked when he first began collecting art, Kapany pauses thoughtfully before replying, "My collection of Sikh art began over 200 years ago." He explains that an important series of 41 miniature paintings illustrating a version of the Janam Sakhis, an early manuscript of stories about the life of the first Sikh spiritual leader, Guru Nanak, was in the Kapany family for over 200 years and was eventually handed down to Kapany in 1970. Another series of 25 illustrations from another version of the Janam Sakhis is also a family heirloom. Kapany believes that the manuscripts themselves were authorized by an ancestor who was head of religious activities at the important Sikh shrine Patna Sahib. These illustrations constituted the bulk of the Kapany collection of Sikh art until the 1980s, when Kapany began noticing significant works of Sikh art and artifacts being sold at the world's top auction houses, including Sotheby's and Christie's, which he began purchasing "like crazy," he says.

The Kapany collection also includes important figurative art such as what is believed to be the earliest known painting of Guru Nanak, circa 1770, wearing a style of dress incorporating Hindu and Islamic elements. Another historical work in the collection is a portrait of the ninth Guru, Tegh Bahadur, from 1670, five years before he was beheaded, and which is believed to be the only surviving image of a Sikh guru painted during his lifetime.

In 1992, in conjunction with its 25th anniversary, the Sikh Foundation mounted an exhibition and conference in collaboration with UC Berkeley and the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco entitled "Splendors of the Punjab: Sikh Art and Literature." Works in the exhibition included parts of the Kapany collection as well as important works of Sikh art owned by other local collectors, mainly Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.

The excitement generated by this first exhibition caused Kapany to approach the Victoria and Albert Museum in London about mounting an international exhibition of Sikh art. With the support of Sue Stronge, a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum who was a presenter at the 1992 conference, and the Asian Art Museum, Kapany galvanized museums and collectors in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., India and Pakistan to contribute the finest pieces of Sikh art to the exhibition, which was then exhibited as "Arts of the Sikh Kingdoms" first in London, then at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, and finally at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada, from 1999 through 2000. During that time nearly one million people saw the exhibition.

"My idea was to show the heritage of the Sikhs - the Punjab as a melting pot of arts, philosophies, faiths and races," says Kapany. "The Sikh kings were patrons of the arts and of schools of art including Mughal, Punjab Hills, Patiala, Kashmir, Persia, Kangra, Victorian England and continental Europe. The international scope of the exhibition complemented its theme of a melding of cultures and traditions. This exhibition was a dream come true for me."

Kapany, who had been collecting the work of noted Sikh artist Arpana Caur for some time, approached her and other leading Sikh artists about a special commission. "I was particularly disturbed and moved by the events in Amritsar in 1984 when the Indian Army invaded the Golden Temple and, of course, the violent anti-Sikh pogroms in Delhi and other cities after Indira Gandhi's assassination," he says. "Yet perhaps traumatized as a community, our artists had yet to express their grief over these events. I wanted the best artists of our community to create works commemorating this violent and tragic era, so that we never forget it." Arpana Caur and others created dramatic and moving works specifically on the theme of 1984, several of which dominate the living room of the Kapanys' Woodside residence.

In April 2003, coinciding with the 35th anniversary of the Sikh Foundation, Kapany inaugurated the Satinder Kaur Kapany Gallery of Sikh Art at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. One year later, in July 2004, the Smithsonian Museum in Washington opened its first exhibition hall of Sikh art entitled "Heritage of the Sikhs" in the National Museum of Natural History. The Sikh Foundation is now focusing on establishing two or three other permanent exhibitions of Sikh art in leading museums, including the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the Lahore Museum in Pakistan.

Last year Kapany, together with a handful of other Sikhs in California, got into filmmaking. Determined to record the horrors of the 1984 riots in Delhi on film so that they would never be forgotten, Kapany and others worked with young Bengali filmmaker Shonali Bose to produce "Amu," the tale of a young Indian American woman who returns to India to find her roots and unearths the horrors of her heritage as a survivor of the riots, and the stark reality of the lack of justice for other survivors remaining in India.

The film opened in January in India to widespread critical acclaim. "Unfortunately, India's censorship bureau has edited the film to remove references to high government officials implicated in organizing and leading the riots," says Kapany. "Otherwise, we are very proud to have played any role in keeping the events of 1984 in the front of the public psyche. These events must never be forgotten, and the healing can never begin, until the victims obtain justice for the organized slaughter that took place in 1984." The film will have its theatrical release in the U.S.

Kapany and the Sikh Foundation that he heads took their mission across a new frontier earlier this year when he headed a delegation of trustees to visit Pakistan. The objective was to consolidate Sikh art in Pakistan in a sensitively curated exhibition at the Lahore Museum. "In my opinion the most important collection of Sikh art in the world is the Princess Bamba Dalip Singh collection, owned by Ranjit Singh's granddaughter before she donated it to the government of Pakistan. It's now housed in Lahore Fort, and we want to see it reunited with other important Sikh works in the Pakistan government's care."

The second goal was to establish a Chair of Sikh Studies at Punjab University in Lahore. "We were gratified by the (Pakistan) prime minister's positive response to both proposals. We have entered a new era in international relations when the old disputes between India and Pakistan, while significant, do not impede progress on the important issue of safeguarding Sikh interests wherever they may lie," Kapany emphasizes. "Ultimately, Sikh history is a part of Pakistan's history, and the government has readily acknowledged that fact and agreed to safeguard this part of the country's heritage."

In recognition for his philanthropy and his scientific and entrepreneurial accomplishments, in 2004 Kapany received India's highest award granted to non-resident Indians - the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, He also recently received a lifetime achievement award from the India Chamber of Commerce in California, and has received numerous honorary doctorates from various universities around the world. Despite the sheaves of accolades, Kapany remains a humble man who acknowledges that his success comes from a higher source. The Kapanys maintain a prayer room in their home which they visit daily. "First and foremost I am a Sikh who believes that God has given me everything that I have today - my family, my health, my brain, the freedom to do what I want in life. I remember that every day. I only hope to be able to pass on what I have learned to future generations."