Biography
Italian scientist and physicist who invented wireless telegraph and radio signal transmission in 1895. In 1902, he discovered the radio magnetic detector. Along with Carl Braun, Marconi was awarded the 1909 Nobel Prize for physics for their separate, but parallel, development of the wireless.
Marconi’s father, Guiseppe, was a well-known and respected landowner in the district. His mother, Anna Jameson, from an eminent Irish family after which the family went to live in Livorno, Italy. From the time he was a small boy he was extraordinarily interested in physics. In Livorno he attended the first national Technical Institute. In 1892 his mother arranged for him to study physics under the supervision of a professor. Spurred on by the work of Benjamin Franklin, in about 1892 he designed and installed on his house a rooftop mechanism that set off a bell whenever there was an electrical storm nearby. This was the first example of the aerial-to-earth system that later became essential to radio-telegraphy.