The Man Who Bent Light: Narinder Kapany and the Nobel That Went to Someone Else | Syed Ali Haider

Your internet travels as light, bending through glass threads thinner than a hair. In 2009 the Nobel Prize was given for this technology, but Narinder Singh Kapany, the man who named it "fiber optics", was not among the winners. Was that fair? You decide. Narinder Singh Kapany was born on 31 October 1926 in Moga, Punjab. As a schoolboy in Dehradun he was told that light travels only in straight lines. At Imperial College London in the 1950s he worked with Harold Hopkins to send a clear image through a bundle of thousands of glass fibres, published in Nature in 1954, and in 1960 he gave the field its name. In this video we follow his story, explain how light bends inside glass (with a carrom board), meet the other scientists in the story, and weigh the case for and against the 2009 Nobel decision, including a line in the Nobel committee's own report. In this video: • The teacher who said light can't bend • How light bends inside glass, explained simply • The 1954 paper, and a rival in the same issue • The job letter from Nehru's government that arrived a year late • The weakness in early fibres, and Charles Kao's breakthrough • How fibre carries almost all phone and internet traffic • 6 October 2009: three winners, the maximum allowed • The case for Kapany, the case against, and his own words • What the Nobel committee's own 2009 report says about him • Why we can't know before 2059 whether he was even nominated Sources named in the video include the Nobel Foundation and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (2009 press release and scientific background), Nature (1954), The New York Times, India Today, Jeff Hecht's "City of Light", IEEE Spectrum and Kapany's memoir "The Man Who Bent Light". Where accounts differ, the video says so. This video is in Urdu. English subtitles are available. 00:00 The Nobel list without his name 00:24 The teacher who said light can't bend 01:12 You are the judge 01:33 A boy from Moga 02:05 An idea older than him 02:24 How light bends (the carrom trick) 02:59 Thousands of threads, one picture 03:58 A rival in the same issue 04:52 The letter that came a year late 05:44 The man who named "fiber optics" 06:22 The glass that ate light 06:48 Charles Kao's idea 07:39 Your internet and the Red Sea cables 08:08 6 October 2009 08:42 The case for Kapany 09:07 The case against 09:50 What Kapany said 10:11 Your verdict 10:36 The Nobel's own report 11:18 Sealed until 2059 11:35 A door that closed in 2020 12:21 The teacher, one last time #FiberOptics #NarinderKapany #ScienceHistory Facebook Page:   / syedalihaiderjournalist   X Account: https://x.com/SyedAliHaider13