Biography
Early years
Marconi was born into the Italian nobility as Guglielmo Giovanni Maria Marconi[7] in Bologna on 25 April 1874, the second son of Giuseppe Marconi (an Italian aristocratic landowner from Porretta Terme) and of his Irish/Scots wife, Annie Jameson (daughter of Andrew Jameson of Daphne Castle in County Wexford, Ireland and granddaughter of John Jameson, founder of whiskey distillers Jameson & Sons.[8]) Marconi received his early education privately in Bologna in the lab of Augusto Righi, in Florence at the Istituto Cavallero and, later, in Livorno, spending two years at Bedford School[9] in England during his peripatetic childhood. As a child Marconi, according to Robert McHenry, did not do well in school,[10] though historian Corradi Giuliano in his biography characterizes Marconi as a true genius.[11] Baptized as a Catholic, he was also a member of the Anglican Church, being married into it; however, he received a Catholic annulment