"Oh, how wonderful is the power of tears, and how clear is our spiritual vision when a shower of tears has purified the turbulent atmosphere of our emotions ! Mother's love and love for mother are the sweetest messages of God to the living earth." Mihajlo Pupin 

Portrait of Mihajlo Pupin, 1903 by Paja Jovanović, source

GENIOUS FROM SHADOW

 Hello, dear Stemians! Today I would like to talk about one of the greatest scientists of all the times. His name is Mihajlo Pupin (Michael Pupin) and many of you probably doesn't even know about him.

 During his significant scientific and experimental work, Mihajlo Pupin gave important conclusions in the fields of multiple telegraphy, wireless telegraphy and telephony, then radiology. He also has great merits for the development of electrical engineering. He is also responsible for the invention of Pupin's coils. He has won many scientific awards and medals; was a member of the American Academy of Sciences, the Serbian Royal Academy and an honorary doctor of 18 universities.

 Loading coil, source

After finishing primary and partly secondary schools in the autumn of 1872, he went to school in Prague, Czech Republic, where he continued his sixth grade and first semester of the seventh grade. He studied very disorderly because of his participation in the conflicts of Czech and German youth. He griefed for homeland. In his 20s, he went to the United States. 

BOOK THAT CHANGES PERSPECTIVE OF SCIENCE

Life of Mihajlo Pupin was everything but not easy. When you once read his autobiography From immigrant to inventor you will be more than surprise with brilliant mind of this scientist that was more than just poetic. His way of seeing life is so unusual and complete. For this book he won Pulicer prize, and the book WAS ALSO PART OF AMERICAN SCHOOL CIRRICULUM. Unfortunately, at that time, many in Serbia didn't even know about him.

In the United States, he worked for the next five years as a physical worker and taught parallel English, Greek and Latin language. After three years of attending evening courses, in the autumn of 1879 he passed the entrance examination and enrolled in Columbia College in New York.

At the studies, he was exempted from tuition fees because he was a suitable student, and at the end of the first year he received two cash prizes for success in Greek and mathematics. During his schooling, he mainly teached other students for money and worked physically hard  jobs.

Autobiography, source

MOTHER THAT LEADED HIM TROUGH THE LIFE

Mihailo was child borned on the village. His parents were very simple people. As a shepard on his fields he watched nature around him and noticed things. Many thing around him. Young shepards would put a knife into the ground and listen if they hear sound of cattle. That was the first time that Mihailo taught about how the sound is transmitted through the ground faster that througt the air. 

Mihailo woudn't be so grate if his uneducated mother Olimpijada didn't know how to say wise things! Before he went to the world, she used to say to him:

My child, if you want to go to the world, about whom you were listening so much about, you have to have another pair of eyes - eyes for reading and writing. There are many things in the world which you can not find out if you can't read and write. Knowledge, these are the golden scales which lead to heaven; Knowledge is the light that illuminates our way through life and leads us into the future full of eternal glory.

And also:

It will teach you that in a world of strangers you must always keep one eye on what you have and with the other eye look out for things that you do not have.

Mother Olimpijada, source

When he went to Prague he didn't have anything. When he entered the ship to America he didn't even had ticket. He had the worst jobs in America and he was often humiliated because he was stranger. He didn't speak english at first. But he had always had his mother in front of his eyes. he taught about her words. He also taught about great ortodoxe Serbian saint Saint Sava wich also went away from his home as a young to go to the monastery and enlighten the people. Mihailo never forgot his home, religion and principles and that was his biggest success. 

Evantought he hadn't been home for long eleven years, his returning was touching. When he came, his father already passed away, but his old mother was still waiting for him.

As we drove slowly through little Idvor everything looked exactly as it had looked eleven years before. There were no new houses, and the old ones looked as old as ever. The people were doing the same work which they always did during that season of the year, and they were doing it in the same way. When we reached the village green. I saw the gate of my mother's yard wide open, a sign that she expected a welcome guest. She sat alone on the bench under a tree in front of her house, and waited, looking in the direction from which she expected me to come. When she saw my sister's team, I observed that suddenly she raised her white handkerchief to her eyes, and my sister whispered to me: ^^Mayka plache !'' ('^Mother is weeping!") I jumped out of the wagon and hastened to embrace her. Oh, how wonderful is the power of tears, and how clear is our spiritual vision when a shower of tears has purified the turbulent atmosphere of our emotions!Mother's love and love for mother are the sweetest messages of God to the living earth. 

Mihailo had big love and respect for religion, but also for the poetry. He was in love with the poems of great Serbian poet Petar Petrovic Njegos. It is interesting that he didn't agree with the Maxwell's theory of light because he found the answer in Njegos poems. He remembered that Serbian poet said in one of his poems that light is ray. So, it had to be that way. And Pupin was more than right...

Serbian poet Petar Petrovic Njegos, source

YEARS OF SUFFER AND MISERY 

Not only that Mihailo was from the poor family, already he had to gain all he had in his life. When he started his trip to Prague, he immediately felt the cruelty of people. In the train he spoke with Austro-Hungarian officials:

I laughed and, introducing myself, informed him, speaking Serb with  some difficulty, that I was neither a South American nor  an Indian, but just a Serb student who was a citizen of the United States. A Serb from the United States was  a very rare bird in those days and, needless to say, I was invited most cordially to join the group, which I did. "You little fool of a Serbian swineherd, do you expect an imperial official to assist you in your lazy habits vou sleepy mutton- head?" "Excuse me," I said with an air of wounded pride, "I am not a Serbian swineherd; I am a son of a brave military frontiersman, and I am going to the famous schools of Prague."He softened, and told me that I should have to go back.

This was not welcoming. In the America he sold everything he had just to by peace of plum pie. He worked in the stalls. At the first he was humiliated because he was Serb. His first significant victory for his status was strangely not conquered by science. He once wrestled with his college colleagues and he was won. They carried him on their backs through the crowd and shouted: Mahailo Srbine (Mihailo, The Serb). That was his victory. He also made friends with another great Serbian scientist-Nikola Tesla 

Tesla and Pupin, source

Pupin never forgot and did not give up from his old homeland. He helped Idvor and Yugoslavia in all possible ways.

Pupin was married to Sarah Catherine Jackson from New York. He had one daughter Varvara.He died on March 12, 1935 in New York and was buried at the Woodland cemetery in the Bronx.

We all should remember him!

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