Born: 10th August 1927
Died: 19th August 1982
Shri Manali Kallat Vainu Bappu was born on 10th August 1927, in the Nizamiah Observatory, Hyderabad. He was born to Manali Kukuzhi and Sunanna Bappu. Vainu Bappu was an excellent student and actively participated in extracurricular activities such as debates, sports, etc. However, he became passionate about astronomy, to which he was exposed from an early age. He had published papers on variable star observations when he was an undergraduate. After completing his Master’s in physics from Madras University, Vainu Bappu joined the prestigious Harvard University on a scholarship.
Within a few months of joining Harvard University, Bappu discovered a comet and named it ‘Bappu-Bok-Newkirk’. It was named after him and his colleagues Bart Bok and Gordon Newkirk. In 1952, he completed his Ph.D. and joined the fellowship. He and Colin Wilson made an important observation which was named as ‘Bappu-Wilson effect’ in that they observed the luminosity of particular kinds of stars. In 1953, he returned to India and played a major role in building the Uttar Pradesh State Observatory in Nainital. In 1960, he served as the director of the Kodaikanal Observatory and contributed a lot to its modernization. He also established the observatory with a powerful telescope in Kavalur, Tamilnadu in 1986. In 1949, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific honored him with the “Donohoe Comet Medal”. He was elected as the President of the International Astronomical Union (1979), as the Honorary Foreign Fellow of the Belgium Academy of Sciences, and was an Honorary Member of the American Astronomical Society. Vainu Bappu died on 19th August 1982. He was the first Indian astronomer whose name was tagged to a comet “Bappu-bok-new kirk” and was also regarded as the Father of ancient Indian astronomy. He succeeded to establish the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore. After four years of his death i.e. 1986 his ambition of setting up a powerful 2.34m telescope was materialized. Vainu has contributed a lot to the improvement of optical astronomy in Independent India and was the greatest astronomer of India.