| Birth Date: | 4 October 1858 |
| Birth Place: | Idvor, Austrian Empire (now Serbia) |
| Death Place: | New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Citizenship: | Austria (1858–1883) United States (1883–1935) |
| Alma Mater: | Columbia University (BA) University of Berlin (PhD) |
| Known For: | Pupin coils |
| Fields: | Physics |
| Doctoral Advisor: | Hermann von Helmholtz |
| Academic Advisors: | John Tyndall |
| Notable Students: | Robert Andrews Millikan Edwin Howard Armstrong |
| Signature: | Pupin signature.png |
Mihajlo Idvorski Pupin (Serbian: Михајло Идворски Пупин, pronounced as /miˈxǎjlo ˈîdʋoɾski ˈpǔpin/; October 4, 1858[1] [2] – March 12, 1935), also known as Michael Pupin, was a Serbian-American physicist, physical chemist and philanthropist based in the United States.[3]
Pupin is best known for his numerous patents, including a means of greatly extending the range of long-distance telephone communication by placing loading coils (of wire) at predetermined intervals along the transmitting wire (known as "pupinization"). Pupin was a founding member of National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) on 3 March 1915, which later became NASA,[4] and he participated in the founding of American Mathematical Society and American Physical Society.
In 1924, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his autobiography. Pupin was elected president or vice-president of the highest scientific and technical institutions, such as the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, the New York Academy of Sciences, the Radio Institute of America, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was also an honorary consul of Serbia in the United States from 1912 to 1920 and played a role in determining the borders of newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.[5] [6]
Mihajlo Pupin was an ethnic Serb,[7] [8] [9] born on 4 October (22 September, O.S.) in the village of Idvor (in the modern-day municipality of Kovačica, Serbia) in the region of Banat, in the Military Frontier of the Austrian Empire, 1858. He always remembered the words of his mother and cited her in his autobiography, From Immigrant to Inventor (1925):
Pupin went to elementary school in his birthplace, to Serbian Orthodox school, and later to German elementary school in Perlez. He enrolled in high school in Pančevo, and later in the Real Gymnasium. He was one of the best students there; a local archpriest saw his enormous potential and talent, and influenced the authorities to give Pupin a scholarship.
Because of his activity in the "Serbian Youth" movement, which at that time had many problems with Austro-Hungarian police authorities, Pupin had to leave Pančevo. In 1872, he went to Prague, where he continued the sixth and first half of the seventh year. After his father died in March 1874, the twenty-year-old Pupin decided to cancel his education in Prague due to financial problems and to move to the United States.
For the next five years in the United States, Pupin worked as a manual laborer (most notably at the biscuit factory on Cortlandt Street in Manhattan) while he learned English, Greek and Latin. He also gave private lectures. After three years of various courses, in the autumn of 1879 he successfully finished his tests and entered Columbia College, where he became known as an exceptional athlete and scholar. A friend of Pupin's predicted that his physique would make him a splendid oarsman, and that Columbia would do anything for a good oarsman. A popular student, he was elected president of his class in his Junior year. He graduated with honors in 1883 and became an American citizen at the same time.
After Pupin completed his studies, with emphasis in the fields of physics and mathematics, he returned to Europe, initially the United Kingdom (1883–1885), where he continued his schooling supervised by John Tyndall at the University of Cambridge. He obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Berlin under Hermann von Helmholtz and in 1889 he returned to Columbia University to become a lecturer of mathematical physics in the newly formed Department of Electrical Engineering. Pupin's research pioneered carrier wave detection and current analysis.[10] He was an early investigator into X-ray imaging, but his claim to have made the first X-ray image in the United States is incorrect.[11] He learned of Röntgen's discovery of unknown rays passing through wood, paper, insulators, and thin metals leaving traces on a photographic plate, and attempted this himself. Using a vacuum tube, which he had previously used to study the passage of electricity through rarefied gases, he made successful images on 2 January 1896. Edison provided Pupin with a calcium tungstate fluoroscopic screen which, when placed in front of the film, shortened the exposure time by twenty times, from one hour to a few minutes. Based on the results of experiments, Pupin concluded that the impact of primary X-rays generated secondary X-rays. With his work in the field of X-rays, Pupin gave a lecture at the New York Academy of Sciences. He was the first person to use a fluorescent screen to enhance X-rays for medical purposes. A New York surgeon, Dr. Bull, sent Pupin a patient to obtain an X-ray image of his left hand prior to an operation to remove lead shot from a shotgun injury. The first attempt at imaging failed because the patient, a well-known lawyer, was "too weak and nervous to be stood still nearly an hour" which is the time it took to get an X-ray photo at the time. In another attempt, the Edison fluorescent screen was placed on a photographic plate and the patient's hand on the screen. X-rays passed through the patients hand and caused the screen to fluoresce, which then exposed the photographic plate. A fairly good image was obtained with an exposure of only a few seconds and showed the shot as if "drawn with pen and ink." Dr. Bull was able to take out all of the lead balls in a very short time.[12] [13]
Pupin's 1899 patent for loading coils, archaically called "Pupin coils", followed closely on the pioneering work of the English polymath Oliver Heaviside, which predates Pupin's patent by some seven years. The importance of the patent was made clear when the American rights to it were acquired by American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T), making him wealthy. Although AT&T bought Pupin's patent, they made little use of it, as they already had their own development in hand led by George Campbell and had up to this point been challenging Pupin with Campbell's own patent. AT&T were afraid they would lose control of an invention which was immensely valuable due to its ability to greatly extend the range of long-distance telephones and especially submarine ones.
When the United States joined the First World War in 1917, Pupin was working at Columbia University, organizing a research group for submarine detection techniques.[14] Together with his colleagues, professors Wils and Morcroft, he performed numerous experiments with the aim of discovering submarines at Key West and New London. He also conducted research in the field of establishing telecommunications between places. During the war, Pupin was a member of the state council for research and state advisory board for aeronautics. For his work he received acclamation from President Warren G. Harding, which was published on page 386 of his autobiography.[15]
By World War I, Pupin was as well-known for Serbian nationalism as science. He wrote that the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in June 1914 "was ... prepared in Vienna" when Austro-Hungarian rule in Bosnia and Herzegovina began in 1878. Pan-Serb ideology was, Pupin said, "a natural heritage of every true Serb".[16] As a politically influential figure in America, Pupin participated in the final decisions of the Paris peace conference after the war, when the borders of the future kingdom (of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians) were drawn. Pupin stayed in Paris for two months during the peace talk (April–May 1919) on the insistence of the government.[17]
According to the London agreement from 1915. it was planned that Italy should get Dalmatia. After the secret London agreement France, England and Russia asked from Serbia some territorial concessions to Romania and Bulgaria. Romania should have gotten Banat and Bulgaria should have gotten a part of Macedonia all the way to Skoplje.[17]
In a difficult situation during the negotiations on the borders of Yugoslavia, Pupin personally wrote a memorandum on 19 March 1919 to American president Woodrow Wilson, who, based on the data received from Pupin about the historical and ethnic characteristics of the border areas of Dalmatia, Slovenia, Istria, Banat, Međimurje, Baranja and Macedonia, stated that he did not recognize the London agreement signed between the allies and Italy.
In 1914, Pupin formed "Fund Olimpijada Aleksić-Pupin" within the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts[18] to commemorate his mother Olimpijada for all the support she gave him through life. Fund assets were used for helping schools in old Serbia and Macedonia, and scholarships were awarded every year on the Saint Sava day. One street in Ohrid was named after Mihajlo Pupin in 1930 to honour his efforts. He also established a separate "Mihajlo Pupin fund" which he funded from his own property in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, which he later gave to "Privrednik" for schooling of young people and for prizes in "exceptional achievements in agriculture", as well as for Idvor for giving prizes to pupils and to help the church district.[19]
Thanks to Pupin's donations, the library in Idvor got a reading room, schooling of young people for agriculture sciences was founded, as well as the electrification and waterplant in Idvor.[20] Pupin established a foundation in the museum of Natural History and Arts in Belgrade. The funds of the foundation were used to purchase artistic works of Serbian artists for the museum and for the printing of certain publications. Pupin invested a million dollars in the funds of the foundation.[19]
In 1909,[21] he established one of the oldest Serbian emigrant organizations in the United States called "Union of Serbs – Sloga." The organization had a mission to gather Serbs in immigration and offer help, as well as keeping ethnic and cultural values. This organization later merged with three other immigrant societies.[22]
Other emigrant organizations in to one large Serbian national foundation, and Pupin was one of its founders and a longtime president (1909–1926).
He also organized "Kolo srpskih sestara" (English: Circle of Serbian sisters) who gathered help for the Serbian Red Cross, and he also helped the gathering of volunteers to travel to Serbia during the First World War with the help of the Serbian patriotic organization called the "Serbian National Defense Council" which he founded and led. Later, at the start of the Second World War this organization was rehabilitated by Jovan Dučić and worked with the same goal. Pupin guaranteed the delivery of food supplies to Serbia with his own resources, and he also was the head of the committee that provided help to the victims of war. He also founded the Serbian society for helping children which provided medicine, clothes and shelter for war orphans.[23]
Besides his patents he published several dozen scientific disputes, articles, reviews and a 396-page autobiography under the name Michael Pupin, From Immigrant to Inventor (Scribner's, 1923).[24] He won the annual Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.[25] [26] It was published in Serbian in 1929 under the title From pastures to scientist (Od pašnjaka do naučenjaka).[27] Beside this he also published:
Columbia University's Physical Laboratories building, built in 1927, is named Pupin Hall in his honor. It houses the physics and astronomy departments of the university. During Pupin's tenure, Harold C. Urey, in his work with the hydrogen isotope deuterium demonstrated the existence of heavy water, the first major scientific breakthrough in the newly founded laboratories (1931). In 1934 Urey was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the work he performed in Pupin Hall related to his discovery of "heavy hydrogen".[28]
Pupin released about 70 technical articles and reviews[29] and 34 patents.[30]
| +Patents released in America | Number of patent | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Apparatus for telegraphic or telephonic transmission | 8 May 1894 | |
| Transformer for telegraphic, telephonic or other electrical systems | 8 May 1894 | |
| Art of distributing electrical energy by alternating currents | 2 January 1900 | |
| Electrical transmission by resonance circuits | 2 January 1900 | |
| Art of reducing attenuation of electrical waves and apparatus therefore | 19 June 1900 | |
| Method of reducing attenuation of electrical waves and apparatus therefore | 19 June 1900 | |
| Winding-machine | 15 April 1902 | |
| Multiple telegraphy | 12 August 1902 | |
| Multiple telegraphy | 12 August 1902 | |
| Producing asymmetrical currents from symmetrical alternating electromotive process | 4 November 1902 | |
| Wireless electrical signalling | 23 August 1904 | |
| Apparatus for reducing attenuation of electric waves | 7 June 1904 | |
| Electric wave transmission | 16 March 1920 | |
| Antenna with distributed positive resistance | 6 April 1920 | |
| Sound generator | 3 December 1921 | |
| Multiple antenna for electrical wave transmission | 23 December 1921 | |
| Selective opposing impedance to received electrical oscillation | 9 May 1922 | |
| Radio receiving system having high selectivity | 10 May 1922 | |
| Wave conductor | 29 May 1922 | |
| Selective amplifying apparatus | 24 April 1923 | |
| Aperiodic pilot conductor | 23 February 1923 | |
| Selective amplifying apparatus | 1 April 1923 | |
| Electrical tuning | 29 May 1923 | |
| Tone producing radio receiver | 29 April 1923 |
After going to America, he changed his name to Michael Idvorsky Pupin, stressing his origin. His father was named Constantine and mother Olimpijada and Pupin had four brothers and five sisters. In 1888 he married American Sarah Catharine Jackson from New York, with whom he had a daughter named Barbara Ivanka Pupin who was born in 1899 in Yonkers, New York, and died on August 2, 1962, in New York.[38] [39] Pupin and his wife were married for eight years; she died from pneumonia at the age of 37.
Pupin owned an estate and farm in Norfolk, Connecticut. He wrote about it as his "real American home", because he "never had a desire to seek a better haven of happiness in any other place".[40]
Pupin had a reputation not only as a great scientist but also a fine person. He was known for his manners, great knowledge, love of his homeland and availability to everyone. Pupin was a great philanthropist and patron of the arts. He was a devoted Orthodox Christian and was the chief financial benefactor of St. Sava Monastery founded in 1923.[41]
Mihajlo Pupin died in New York City in 1935 at age 76 and was interred at Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx.
He is included in The 100 most prominent Serbs.