A great man is one who collects knowledge the way a bee collects honey and uses it to help people overcome the difficulties they endure - hunger, ignorance and disease!
- Nikola Tesla

Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.
- Franklin Roosevelt

While their territory has been devastated and their homes despoiled, the spirit of the Serbian people has not been broken.
- Woodrow Wilson

Mihajlo Pupin

Mihajlo Idvorski Pupin, Ph.D, LL.D. (October 4th, 1858 - March 12th, 1935) was a Serbian physicist, best known for devising 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 born in the village Idvor, Banat (then the Austro-Hungarian Empire) to a Serbian family. Pupin emigrated to U.S. when he was only 16.

He spent the next few years in a series of menial jobs, learning English and American ways. He entered Columbia College in 1879, where he became known as an exceptional athlete and scholar. A popular student, he was elected president of his class in his junior year. He graduated with honors in 1883 at Columbia College, New York and became an American citizen at the same time. 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 teacher of mathematical physics in the newly formed Department of Electrical Engineering. Pupin's research pioneered carrier wave detection and current analysis.

Pupin's 1894 invention, now known as "Pupin coil", greatly extended the range of long-distance telephones. This was a very important invention and he became wealthy when American Telephone and Telegraph acquired the rights to the patent. Pupin's work followed closely on the pioneering work of the English physicist and mathematician Oliver Heaviside, which predates Pupin's patent by some 7 years. Pupin was among the first to replicate Roentgen's production of x-rays in the United States. He in 1896 invented the method of placing a sheet of paper impregnated with fluorescent dyes next to the photographic plate, thereby permitting an exposure of only a few seconds, rather than that of an hour or more. He also carried out the first medically-oriented studies of the utility of x-rays in the United States. In 1901, he became a professor and, in 1931, a professor emeritus of Columbia University.

In 1911 Pupin became a consul of Kingdom of Serbia in New York. In his speech to Congress on January 8, 1918, known as the Fourteen Points speech, U.S. president Woodrow Wilson, inspired by his conversations with Pupin, insisted on the restoration of Serbia and Montenegro, as well as autonomy for the peoples of the Austria/Hungary monarchy.

Michael Pupin's autobiography, "From Immigrant to Inventor", won the Pulitzer Prize in 1924. He also wrote "The New Reformation" (1927) and "Romance of the Machine" (1930), as well as many technical papers. In his many popular writings, Pupin advanced the view that modern science supported and enhanced belief in God. Pupin was active with the Serb emigre societies in the USA. He was the first president and founder of the Serbian National Defense Council of America. In 1918, professor Pupin edited a book on Serbian monuments, under the title "Serbian Orthodox Church".

Pupin was president of the New York Academy of Science, member of the French Academy of Science and the Serbian Academy of Science. Pupin was also president of the Institute of Radio Engineers in 1917 and the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1925-1926.In 1920, he received AIEE's Edison Medal for his work in mathematical physics and its application to the electric transmission of intelligence. Columbia University's Pupin Hall, the site of Pupin Physics Laboratory, is a building completed in 1927 and named after him in 1935. A small crater on the Moon was named in his honor.

Book

New York Academy of Sciences - A Tribute to Michael Pupin

New York Academy of Sciences - A Tribute to Michael Pupin


Mihajlo Pupin – slikar

Našeg genija, Mihajla Pupina, znamo kao velikog naučnika i dobrotvora, ali njegov umetnički talenat je manje poznat. U trećem razredu realke u Pančevu (1871/72), gledajući u malu fotografiju, naslikao je krejonom portret Koste Isakovića trgovca iz Farkaždina, veličine 47cmx40cm, i to tako živopisno da zavređuje svaku pohvalu. Ova slika se danas nalazi u Narodnom muzeju Zrenjanin, a u desnom donjem uglu i dalje je vidljiv potpis autora – Mihajla Pupina.


SA

 

People Directory

Krinka Vidaković-Petrov

Dr. Krinka Vidaković-Petrov - scholar, professor, translator and diplomat. PhD in Comparative Literature. Currently senior fellow (full professor) at the Institute of Literature and Art in Belgrade. Fields of interest: comparative literature and folklore, Balkan and Serbian studies, emigrant culture, Hispanic and Judaic studies, literary translation, Holocaust studies. Author of several books and numerous contributions in academic journals in Serbia and abroad. Served as ambassador of Serbia in Israel (2001-2006).

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Publishing

My Brother's Keeper

by Fr. Radovan Bigovic

Rare are the books of Orthodox Christian authors that deal with the subject of politics in a comprehensive way. It is taken for granted that politics has to do with the secularized (legal) protection of human rights (a reproduction of the philosophy of the Enlightenment), within the political system of so-called "representative democracy", which is limited mostly to social utility or to the conventional rules of human relations. Most Christians look at politics and democracy as unrelated with their experience of the Church herself, which abides both in history and in the Kingdom, the eschaton. Today, the commercialization of politics—its submission to the laws of publicity and the brainwashing of the masses—has literally abolished the "representative" parliamentary system. So, why bother with politics when every citizen of so-called developed societies has a direct everyday experience of the rapid decline and alienation of the fundamental aspects of modernity?

In the Orthodox milieu, Christos Yannaras has highlighted the conception of the social and political event that is borne by the Orthodox ecclesiastical tradition, which entails a personalistic (assumes an infinite value of the human person as opposed to Western utilitarian individualism) and relational approach. Fr Radovan Bigovic follows this approach. In this book, the reader will find a faithful engagement with the liturgical and patristic traditions, with contemporary thinkers, Orthodox and non-Orthodox, all in conversation with political science and philosophy. As an excellent Orthodox theologian and a proponent of dialogue, rooted in the catholic (holistic) being of the Orthodox Church and of his Serbian people, Fr Radovan offers a methodology that encompasses the above-mentioned concerns and quests.