Mihajlo Pupin: 100th Anniversary of the Beginning of a New Era in the Broadcasting of Radio Waves - Creating a World of Telecommunications -

UNESCO sponsored the initiative of establishing 2015 as the International Year of Light. The light itself is an electromagnetic wave. Very suitably, the transmission of radio (electromagnetic) signals (discoveries by Pupin) has a prominent place in this celebration. The year 2015 was chosen having in view 6 patents of Pupin from 1915 (some of them with Edvin Armstrong, laureate of Nobel Prize) concerning radio transmission.
 
In this lecture the sketch of the academic career of Michal Pupin will be presented. After finishing his studies at Columbia University, he went to Cambridge and at the end made his Ph.D. in Berlin (mentor was Helmholz). He returned to USA and was professor at Columbia University until the retirement. He founded the first genuine Physics Laboratory in USA. His scientific results will be shortly described. His patents will be commented, as well as some important discoveries (especially pupinization). At the end its pedagogical and organizational work will be presented. He published an autobiography (From Immigrant to Inventor) and obtained 1923 Pulitzer Prize. He got the Edisson Medal. He was the President of IRE. He was the author of the first paper published in the first number of PIRE (1913) 50 years later becoming Proceedings of the IEEE, continuing with the volumes numeration (51). He was one of the founders (1915) of NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics), now NASА. He was Doctor honoris causa at 18 universities.