1874-1937

Italian Physicist and Inventor

Guglielmo Marconi, a physicist and inventor, was responsible for pioneering a new method of communication known as radio telegraphy. A recipient of the 1909 Nobel Prize for physics, Marconi's revolutionary conception of long-distance transmissions continues to underpin contemporary applications of wireless technologies.

Marconi was born on April 25, 1874, in Bologna, Italy, to an Italian father and an Irish mother. Privately tutored at his father's estate in Pontecchio, near Bologna, Guglielmo was an inquisitive child who quickly developed an interest in atmospheric and static electricity. He read extensively from his father's scientific library and was particularly fascinated by the way Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) had proved lightning to be electricity. After studying in Bologna and Florence, Marconi became a physics student at the technical school in Leghorn, where he studied the work of Heinrich Hertz (1857-1894) and Oliver Lodge (1851-1940).

In 1894 Marconi began experimenting by...