Vijay Kumar Kapahi earned his PUC degree (1959) and BSc degree (1962) from St. Joseph's College, Bangalore. He carried out his doctoral research in Angular Structures of Extragalactic Radio Sources and Cosmology from Bombay University in 1975 under the supervision of Professor Govind Swarup, FRS. He served as Professor in National Centre for Radio Astrophysics, TIFR, Pune.

Academic and Research Achievements: Professor Kapahi had made important and outstanding contributions in the study of radio galaxies, quasars and observational cosmology, for which he was very highly regarded internationally. His early path-breaking work on the angular sizeflux density relation for extragalactic radio sources, based on observations with the Ooty Radio Telescope, provided strong evidence for cosmological evolution in the linear sizes of radio sources. His many subsequent investigations in angular size cosmology resulted in a much better understanding of the epoch and luminosity dependence of the linear sizes of double radio sources and provided very valuable insights into the physical environments of powerful radio galaxies at early cosmic epochs. Among his other pioneering contributions are: Discovery, through VLBI of fine structure in the 'hot spots' at the extremities of the twin lobes of extragalactic radio sources; Discovery of a new class of compact steep-spectrum radio sources that have since acquired a great deal of astrophysical importance; Work on the 'unification' of the apparently different properties of lobe-dominated and core-dominated quasars as arising from the aspect dependence of the effects of relativistic beaming in their nuclear jets; and Analysis of the epoch dependence of asymmetries and misalignments in the extended structure of radio galaxies and quasars.

Awards and Honours: Kapahi received SS Bhatnagar Award (1987), Hari Om Ashram Prerit Vikram Sarabhai Research Award (1987) and Henri Chretien Research Grant Award of the American Astronomical Society (1991). He was a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore, National Academy of Sciences (India), Allahabad and Maharashtra Academy of Sciences. He was also a Member of Astronomical Society of India (President, 1997-till death), International Astronomical Union and Indian Physics Association.