From an immigrant to a leading world scientist - the tale of a genius Mihailo Pupin

The world got another scientist

My dear child, if you want to go into the world, which you listened so much in our home , you will need to have another pair of eyes at hand – the eyes for reading and the eyes for writing. There are many things in the world that you cannot explore if you cannot read and write. Knowledge is the golden ladder that meanders its way right to the blue skies. This was how Olimpijada spoke to her son Michael Pupin, who listened to his mother, and the world received another scientist who was about to provide it with new dimensions in the years to come.

Persistence paid off

Pupin was born in 1854 in the village of Idvor in Banat. After elementary school, he attended Pancevo Grammar School where he fell in love with natural sciences - especially physics. He spent summer vacations in the village playing with his friends and raising cattle. At the time, there were many cattle poachers around, which wreaked havoc in Michael’s life and the life of the other shepherds alike. To prevent poaching, he came up with a system of signals that communicated with each other. While developing this invention, he concluded that sound is transmitted better through the ground than through air - this phenomenon will be the basis for his later great discoveries.

He continued his education in Prague, then went to America where he joined the Columbia University. Coming from a humble family background , he had to work hard to pay his way through college . He scraped a living by working on farms, loading coal and painting walls. Yet his persistence paid off eventually. He finished Colombia as one of the best students and received a scholarship that allowed him to continue his education at Cambridge.

From a poor immigrant to a leading world scientist

His research and inventions enabled the development of telephony and radio communications (Pupin's theory and Pupin's coils) and helped him manage the testing of X-rays with great success. He invented twenty-four patents in the field of telephony, telegraphy, and the radio and he received a number of scientific awards. He was the first Serbian consul in America, and one laboratory at the University of Columbia is today still called Pupin's Physical Laboratory. He is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for the autobiographical work From pasture to scientist – the book is still read today in America as a mandatory reading which is about a living proof of the American dream – his struggle from the life of a humble immigrant with but five dimes in his pocket to the world renowned scientist. Pupin died in 1935 in New York where he was buried.

Pupin's motto

His basic motto was: educate yourself, learn everything you can, apply it and have financial gains out of it. This motto can surely be applied even in this day and age as encouragement and an underlying message that anything is possible if we make enough effort.

Knowledge is the golden ladder leading us to heaven; knowledge is the light that guides our way through this world leading us into the world of the future and all the glory that might follow.

Istražite više:

• Posetite laboratoriju za fiziku Pupin na Univerzitetu Kolumbije da biste bili svedoci nastavka njegovog naučnog nasleđa.
• Posetite muzej i rodnu kuću Mihajla Pupina u Idvoru, Srbija oko 70 km od Beograda.
• Posetite našu Mihajlo Pupin kolekciju za najbolje knjige o Pupinu.