Manali Kallat Vainu Bappu (10 August 1927 – 19 August 1982) was an Indian astronomer and president of theInternational Astronomical Union. Bappu helped to establish several astronomical institutions in India, including theVainu Bappu Observatory which is named after him, and he also contributed to the establishment of the modernIndian Institute of Astrophysics. In 1957, he discovered theWilson–Bappu effect jointly with American astronomerOlin Chaddock Wilson.
On 2 July 1949, when Bappu was taking pictures of the night sky, he spotted a bright moving object which he had rightfully understood to be acomet. When he turned to his professor,Bart Bok, and colleague Gordon Newkirk, they confirmed the discovery. They calculated the orbit of the comet which revealed that the comet would reappear only after 60,000 years.
The International Astronomical Union officially named the comet as the Bappu-Bok-Newkirk comet (C/1949N1). Bappu also received the Donohoe Comet Medal of theAstronomical Society of the Pacific.
This is the only comet with an Indian name.
Vainu Bappu was born on 10 August 1927, inChennai, as the only child of Manali Kukuzhi Bappu and Kallat Sunanna bappu.[1] His family originally hails fromThalassery inKerala. His grandfather kakkuzhi kunji bappu gurukkal whose family was an aristrocatic thiyya tharavad in tellichery was a sanskrit poet and scholar and father was an astronomer at the Nizamiah Observatory inTelangana.[1] He attended theHarvard Graduate School of Astronomy for hisPhD after obtaining postgraduate degree from theMadras University.[1]
Bappu, along with two of his colleagues, discovered the 'Bappu-Bok-Newkirk' comet.[2] He was awarded the Donhoe Comet-Medal by theAstronomical Society of the Pacific in 1949.[1]
In a paper published in 1957, American astronomerOlin Chaddock Wilson and Bappu had described what would later be known as theWilson–Bappu effect.[3] The effect as described by L.V. Kuhi is: 'The width of the Ca II emission in normal, nonvariable, G, K, and M stars is correlated with the visual absolute magnitude in the sense that the brighter the star the wider the emission.'[3] The paper opened up the field of stellar chromospheres for research.[4]
On his return to India, Bappu was appointed to head a team of astronomers to build an observatory atNainital.[1] His efforts of building an indigenous largeoptical telescope and a research observatory led to the founding of the optical observatory ofKavalur and its large telescope.[2][4] TheVainu Bappu Observatory is one of the main observatories of theIndian Institute of Astrophysics, also initiated in its modern avatar by Bappu in 1971.[4] Later, a number of discoveries were made from the Vainu Bappu Observatory.[5]
| Post | Institution |
|---|---|
| Honorary Foreign Fellow | Belgium Academy of Sciences[1] |
| Honorary Member | American Astronomical Society[1] |
| Vice-President | International Astronomical Union (1967–73)[1] |
| President | International Astronomical Union (1979)[1] |
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
