Guglielmo Marconi (Nobel)

Guglielmo Giovanni Maria Marconi, an Italian inventor and electrical engineer, gained fame for his creation of the wireless radio for which he shared a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1909. Marconi did not attend school but instead learned science from tutors employed by his parents. From an early age, Marconi exhibited an interest in the scientific field of electricity. Leveraging recent discoveries on "radio waves", Marconi demonstrated a primitive radio transmitter to his mother which was capable of ringing a bell across the room, without a wired connection. He realized a major breakthrough when he extended his antennas, increasing the transmission distance allowing him to eventually transmit across the Atlantic ocean... and the rest is history. In this quote, Marconi compares wireless communication to prayer: "I am proud to be a Christian. I believe not only as a Christian, but as a scientist as well. A wireless device can deliver a message through the wilderness. In prayer the human spirit can send invisible waves to eternity, waves that achieve their goal in front of God." In 1931, Marconi set up Vatican Radio for Pope Pius XI.