Michael I. Pupin

Michael I. Pupin was born in the village of Idvor in the Banat, then part of the Military Frontier of Austria and now in Serbia. His full name was Mihajlo Idvorski Pupin, Anglicized as Michael Idvorsky Pupin.⁠[1][2]

His parents were Serbian farmers settled in the Banat, then a military buffer zone between the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires; they could not read or write but supported his schooling.⁠[1][3][4]

The sketch published by the Norfolk Historical Society names his father as Constantine and his mother as Olimpijada.⁠[5]

The Institute Mihajlo Pupin’s account explains that the Serbs settled in the Military Frontier, to which Idvor belonged, were Austrian subjects allowed to keep their language and customs, and it describes his parents as “illiterate but intelligent and well-respected” farmers who brought him up in the old Serbian traditions. The Encyclopedia of World Biography states that Serbs had settled the Banat in 1690 and that his parents made sacrifices for his education; Contemporary Authors calls his parents loving and deeply religious and describes Idvor as a small Serbian village near Belgrade. The Columbia Alumni Association’s page on his autobiography says his birthplace was “so tiny it appeared on no maps.”⁠[4][3][6][7]

As a boy he worked as a shepherd; the Columbia 250 biography says he tended sheep in the fields. The Norfolk Historical Society’s sketch relates that he spent his boyhood summers herding livestock on the hilly pastures around Idvor and guarding the animals at night against thieves, whom it calls Rumanian, and that he noticed that his long wooden-handled knife, driven into the ground, set up underground vibrations by which roaming animals could be located at a distance, the sound carrying farther where the ground was hard. The sketch presents this as the first hint of the invention that made his name and fortune 25 years later.⁠[2][8][5]

Two dates of birth are on record. The Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography, the Engineering and Technology History Wiki and the National Inventors Hall of Fame give October 4, 1858; BritannicaEncyclopædia BritannicaEncyclopædia Britannica is a general English-language encyclopedia first published in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1768; the name also refers to its publisher, Chicago-based Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. (which presents itself as The Britannica Group). The print edition ended in 2012, and the company’s main businesses since then have been the online encyclopedia Britannica.com, digital education products for schools and libraries, and Merriam-Webster dictionaries.Open the full entry gives October 9 (September 27, Old Style), 1854, with a question mark after the year; and the Institute Mihajlo Pupin in Belgrade, which bears his name, also gives October 9, 1854.⁠[3][2][9][1][4]

Britannica’s researcher’s note states that October 4, 1858, matches his gravestone in Woodlawn Cemetery and is supported by the obituaries published in 1935 by The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American morning daily newspaper published in New York City. Founded in 1851, it is published by The New York Times Company.Open the full entry and Science, while some Serbian sources, including the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, point to 1854. The note adds that Edward B. Davis, in Eminent Lives in Twentieth-Century Science & Religion (2009), considers 1854 “more likely,” on the evidence of a baptismal record dated September 27 (Old Style), 1854, and of a letter Michael I. Pupin wrote in 1933; in the letter he explained that before his marriage in 1888 he asked a priest in Idvor for a baptismal certificate, that it gave October 4, 1858, and that he thought this an error but used that date from then on.⁠[10]

The Norfolk Historical Society’s sketch prints a third date, October 9, 1858. Britannica’s researcher’s note names the American National Biography (1999) and the Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography (2008) among the reference works that give October 4, 1858, and dates the two obituaries to March 13, 1935 (The New York Times) and May 17, 1935 (Science). It adds that the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts was organized as the Serbian Royal Academy, which claimed him as a member; that Edward B. Davis supplied the baptismal record and the 1933 letter at Britannica’s request; and that the letter was translated for Davis and then reviewed for Britannica by the Slavic-languages scholar E. Wayles Browne; the note says that its account necessarily relies on the interpretations of those individuals. The note does not say which date Britannica accepts.⁠[5][10]

He learned reading, writing and arithmetic in his mother tongue at the elementary school in Idvor, continued his schooling in Pančevo in 1869 and was sent to Prague in 1872.⁠[4][2]

He stayed in Prague for more than a year; after his father’s sudden death he decided to go to America.⁠[3][4]

The Norfolk Historical Society’s sketch relates that his mother, although she could not read or write, sent him to a more advanced school in a neighboring village, where he first heard of Benjamin FranklinBenjamin FranklinBenjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 – April 17, 1790) was a printer, publisher, scientist, diplomat, and statesman of colonial North America and the founding era of the United States, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. In Philadelphia he ran the Pennsylvania Gazette and published Poor Richard’s Almanack, founded the first lending library in North America, and proposed the school that later became the University of Pennsylvania; known for his electrical experiments and inventions such as the lightning rod, he served as the first Postmaster General of the United States, took part in drafting the Declaration of Independence, signed the treaty between the United States and France while in France, and signed the Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War.Open the full entry’s experiments with kites and electricity. The Institute Mihajlo Pupin’s account says that at Pančevo he had “good teachers, particularly in the natural sciences,” and the Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography says his parents were encouraged to let him finish secondary school in a larger center. The sketch reproduces a photograph captioned “Olimpijada Pupin.”⁠[5][4][3]

By the sketch’s account his church sent him to school in Prague to remove him from political upheaval at home, a journey of two days on the Danube and one day by rail from Budapest; when his father died he wanted to go home to care for his mother, who would not allow it. He then saw a newspaper advertisement for steerage passage on the ship Westphalia from Hamburg to New York, sold his belongings and bought a one-way ticket to America.⁠[5]

At the end of March 1874 he arrived alone in New York, without funds or friends.⁠[4][3]

In his autobiography he describes himself on landing in March 1874 as a “boy of fifteen”; the profile published by the Department of Physics of Columbia University puts his age at immigration at 16.⁠[10][11]

For about five years he took odd jobs on farms and in factories, drove mules and worked in a cracker factory, while learning English and studying with the resources and evening classes of Cooper Union.⁠[3][2][6]

The sketch describes a rough, stormy Atlantic crossing of about two weeks and has him land at Castle Garden in New York in 1874 at the age of fifteen, with 5 cents and knowing no one. The Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography says he made the journey before he was sixteen, and Contemporary Authors calls him sixteen years old; the Engineering and Technology History Wiki says he left with his parents’ support but very little money, and the profile published by Columbia University’s Department of Electrical Engineering says he arrived penniless.⁠[5][3][6][2][12]

By the sketch’s account he first took a laborer’s job on a farm in DelawareDelawareDelaware is a U.S. state in the Mid-Atlantic region on the East Coast, with its capital at Dover and Wilmington as its largest city. On December 7, 1787, it became the first state to ratify the U.S. Constitution, entering the Union as the 1st state, and it had a population of 989,948 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry, where he learned English from the farmer’s daughter; he returned to New York in the fall and shoveled coal, and then worked at the New England Cracker Company on Courtland Street in Manhattan, stamping the firm’s name on crackers. In the evenings he took free classes at Cooper Union and read the classics in its library, where he was captivated by the painting Men of Progress, which shows nineteen American inventors, among them Samuel F. B. Morse, Charles Goodyear and Samuel Colt; the sketch’s text names the painter as Christian Schussele, and its caption reads “Men of Progress – Charles Schussele – 1862.” The Institute Mihajlo Pupin’s account says that, having finished neither school nor apprenticeship and knowing no English, he had “a very hard time” in his first years.⁠[5][4]

The sketch calls him outgoing and charismatic, with a gift for winning over influential people. It relates that Dr. Charles Shepard arranged for him to be tutored in Greek and Latin and urged him to apply to Columbia College, then at 49th Street and Madison Avenue; that he went to Broadway plays and imitated the enunciation of the Shakespearean actor Edwin Booth to improve his English; and that he spent summers in New JerseyNew JerseyNew Jersey is a state in the eastern United States on the Atlantic Ocean, bordered by New York State, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, with the Hudson River forming its northeastern boundary and the Delaware River its western boundary; its capital is Trenton and its largest city is Newark. One of the original 13 colonies, it became the third state to ratify the U.S. Constitution on December 18, 1787, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 9,288,994.Open the full entry cutting hay by day and studying Greek and Latin at night, so that before the entrance examinations he knew by heart the first two books of the Iliad and four orations of Cicero.⁠[5]

In the autumn of 1879 he passed the entrance examination and entered Columbia College (now Columbia University) on a scholarship.⁠[4][3][1]

In 1883 he graduated with honors with a B.A., having served as class president; he became a U.S.United StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry citizen the same year, on the day before graduation by the account of the Engineering and Technology History Wiki.⁠[1][2][3]

The Engineering and Technology History Wiki says he passed the entrance examination “with high honors,” and the sketch says he was granted four years of free tuition. By the sketch’s account he won 100-dollar scholarships in Greek and in mathematics after his freshman year, took Columbia’s heavyweight wrestling championship, excelled in crew and was elected class president in his junior year.⁠[2][5]

The sketch describes the Columbia of those years as “a nest of dudes and snobs” and says he earned money by tutoring wealthy students, among them the son of the astronomer Lewis Morris Rutherfurd, who sponsored his application to study mathematics at Cambridge. It adds that since his herding days he had been fascinated by light and sound, which he regarded as “divine methods of speech,” and that in college he studied the work of Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell on electromagnetism.⁠[5]

The sketch puts his naturalization two days before graduation; the Columbia 250 biography, like the Engineering and Technology History Wiki, puts it on the day before. By the sketch’s account Columbia offered him a three-year graduate fellowship in science and letters worth 500 dollars a year, which he declined in order to go to Cambridge; the Columbia University Department of Physics profile says he won fellowships to study at Cambridge and at the University of Berlin, and the Institute Mihajlo Pupin’s account says he received a scholarship for further studies in theoretical physics after graduating. The Columbia Engineering bulletin lists him as a graduate of the Columbia College class of 1883.⁠[5][8][11][4][13]

After graduating he spent about two years studying mathematics at the University of CambridgeUniversity of CambridgeThe University of Cambridge is a university in Cambridge, England, United Kingdom. It gives 1209 as its founding date, is made up of Schools, Faculties, Departments and autonomous Colleges, and is a member of the Russell Group.Open the full entry and held Columbia’s John Tyndall fellowship; the Encyclopedia of World Biography states that he was the first holder of that fellowship in physics.⁠[2][6][3]

From 1885 he studied and did research in experimental physics at the University of Berlin under Hermann von Helmholtz; the Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography also names G. Kirchhoff as one of his teachers in Berlin.⁠[2][3]

In 1889 he received his doctorate there with a dissertation on osmotic pressure and its relation to free energy.⁠[1][3][4]

The sketch places him at King’s College, Cambridge, and says he found the teaching, geared to the mathematical tripos, unchallenging and cut his stay short to study under Hermann von Helmholtz in Berlin, whom he charmed with stories of his peasant boyhood in Serbia; it dates his degree, a doctorate in philosophy, to 1886 and gives the dissertation title as “Osmotic Pressure and Free Energy.” Contemporary Authors has him return to Columbia in 1885 as John Tyndall fellow after two years at Cambridge.⁠[5][6]

The Institute Mihajlo Pupin’s account counts six years of study of physics and electrical engineering at Cambridge and Berlin and says that in Berlin he worked on physical chemistry under Helmholtz; the Encyclopedia of World Biography gives his fields abroad as mathematical physics and physical chemistry, the Columbia 250 biography calls his doctorate one in mathematical physics, and the profile published by Columbia University’s Department of Electrical Engineering speaks of graduate training in electricity and electromagnetism in England and Germany.⁠[4][3][8][12]

In 1889 Columbia’s trustees decided to establish a Department of Electrical Engineering, whose founding faculty consisted of two men: Francis Bacon Crocker and Michael I. Pupin, a physicist by training. The department was first housed in a small brick building that students called “the cowshed.”⁠[14]

He taught mathematical physics at Columbia from 1889, became an instructor in 1890 and adjunct professor of mechanics in 1892.⁠[1][2][6]

On March 18, 1890, in New York, he applied for admission to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE).⁠[15]

The sketch says Columbia offered him a professorship of mathematical physics in the new department at 2,500 dollars a year. The Institute Mihajlo Pupin’s account says he began in 1889 as a lecturer in the newly established Department of Electrical Engineering of the School of Mines, soon became associate professor, and taught first mathematical physics and then thermodynamics and hydraulics; the Columbia University Libraries’ exhibition text dates his return to teach at Columbia to 1892.⁠[5][4][16]

The Engineering and Technology History Wiki says the new department’s equipment was neither modern nor sufficient. The department’s history notes that Francis Bacon Crocker had founded the Crocker-Wheeler Electric Motor Company and reproduces a 1902 photograph of Thomas EdisonThomas EdisonThomas Edison (1847–1931) was an American inventor and entrepreneur who received 1,093 U.S. patents in his lifetime. He invented or improved the phonograph, the practical incandescent lamp and its supporting electric power system, motion picture camera and viewing equipment, and the alkaline storage battery, among other things, and established industrial research laboratories at Menlo Park and West Orange, and is regarded as one of the pioneers of the modern industrial research and development model.Open the full entry with him, Darling and Crocker; the department’s profile calls Michael I. Pupin its second faculty member and the first of a long line of immigrant scholars at Columbia, and says he mentored its first graduate students and that Edwin Howard Armstrong and John H. Morecroft received their early inspiration from him. The Columbia Engineering bulletin counts him among the professors of the School of Mines, renamed the School of Mines, Engineering, and Chemistry in 1896.⁠[2][14][12][13]

His early research dealt with the distortion produced when iron is magnetized by alternating current, which led him to develop electrical resonators, by analogy with the resonators used to study complex sound waves, for problems in telegraphy and telephony; the Encyclopedia of World Biography dates the electrical resonator to 1893 and notes its later use in radio tuning.⁠[3]

He supported alternating-current power transmission, which put him at odds with the established direct-current interests.⁠[12]

In 1892 Alexander Graham Bell visited Columbia. In a letter to President Seth Low, Michael I. Pupin asked for an introduction; in a second, more detailed letter he described an arrangement with the American Bell Telephone Company for a 1,000-dollar experiment to test his ideas.⁠[12]

The Institute Mihajlo Pupin’s account names as his first major success his study of the harmonics of sources of alternating current, which led to multiplex telegraphy, protected by several patents. The Columbia University Libraries’ exhibition text dates his research on electrical resonance to 1892–1895 and says the electrical tuning that came from it was “universally applied in all radio work.” Contemporary Authors says he began experiments on electromagnetic phenomena in 1892 and that patents from them were sold to the Marconi Company, and that his tuned oscillating circuit, which allowed more than one message to be sent over a wire at once, belonged to the Bell Telephone Company from 1901. The Encyclopedia of World Biography adds early research on the passage of electrical charges through gases and on a general theory of wave propagation and, later, on means of overcoming static in wireless communication.⁠[4][16][6][3]

In 1894 he studied wave propagation along a vibrating string and found that waves died away less quickly on a string carrying evenly spaced weights; applying this to long-distance telephony, he worked out the correct spacing of inductance (“loading”) coils along telephone lines.⁠[2][3]

Inserting loading coils at set intervals along the transmitting wire reduced attenuation and distortion and greatly extended the range of long-distance telephone communication. The coils became known as the “Pupin coil,” and lines so equipped were for a time called “pupinized.”⁠[1][3][13]

In 1901 the American Telephone and Telegraph Co. and German telephone interests acquired the patent for this long-distance telephony invention; the Encyclopedia of World Biography names the German party as Siemens and Halske. The National Inventors Hall of Fame profile notes that the American Telephone and Telegraph Co. acquired the American patent rights although it had a development effort of its own led by George Campbell.⁠[1][3][9]

The Norfolk Historical Society’s sketch says he filed his patent for the coil in 1899, narrowly ahead of several other scientists, that the American Telephone and Telegraph Co. paid “almost a half million dollars” for it and that it saved the company 100 million dollars over 25 years; the sketch links the idea to his boyhood observation with the knife. The National Inventors Hall of Fame profile says the company bought the patent to keep control of the technology.⁠[5][9]

Contemporary Authors says he was the first to treat electrical transmission over artificial lines mathematically and that his theory became the basis of the electrical filters used in telephone, telegraph and radio transmission. The Institute Mihajlo Pupin’s account says that he tested the coils in practice, that the invention made him rich and famous while drawing him away from fundamental research in physics, and that the system lost importance in the 1930s with the rise of electronics, though it remained in use in special cases.⁠[6][4]

After Röntgen announced the discovery of X-rays in December 1895, he built an X-ray tube of his own; he was among the first in America to follow up the discovery and carried out one of the first medically oriented studies of X-rays.⁠[3][9]

In 1896 he discovered that atoms struck by X-rays emit secondary X-ray radiation, and he invented a method of short-exposure X-ray photography: a fluorescent substance placed between the photographic plate and the object cut the exposure from an hour or more to a fraction of a second.⁠[1][2]

On April 6, 1896, he communicated to the New York Academy of Sciences several discoveries made in three months of research.⁠[4]

The Columbia University Libraries’ exhibition text dates the faster method of X-ray photography to February 1896 and the discovery of secondary radiation to April 1896; the Encyclopedia of World Biography places that discovery within two weeks of Röntgen’s announcement, and the Institute Mihajlo Pupin’s account has him making X-ray prints two months after the discovery of the rays. The Michael Idvorsky Pupin Papers in Columbia’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library include his X-ray photograph of lead shot in a human hand, probably taken in February 1896, the gift of Mrs. Rose Trbovich Andrews in 1965 and 1970. The exhibition text dates Röntgen’s discovery to November 1895 and says the method placed a fluorescent screen between the object and the photographic plate, shortened the exposure from about an hour to a few seconds and became the one in universal use; it adds that in April 1896 he also invented an electrical resonator.⁠[16][3][4]

The Norfolk Historical Society’s sketch dates Röntgen’s first X-rays to December 1895 and relates that only two weeks later a New York lawyer who had accidentally shot himself in the hand was brought to his laboratory, and that with phosphorescent paper given to him by his friend Thomas Edison he obtained an X-ray picture of the hand in a few seconds; a caption on the page reads “Pupin’s Hand X-Ray Exposing Buckshot – 1896.” Contemporary Authors says he was the first to apply X-rays therapeutically, to a woman with breast cancer; the Columbia Alumni Association’s page credits him with inventing the therapeutic X-ray, and the profile published by Columbia University’s Department of Electrical Engineering says he played a critical role in developing medical imaging technology. By the sketch’s account he was afterwards no longer able to work with X-rays, which he felt had helped to bring on his pneumonia.⁠[5][6][7][12]

In 1901 he became professor of electromechanics.⁠[3][6]

After Columbia moved to Morningside Heights in 1897, he set up the Marcellus Hartley Laboratory in the basement of Philosophy Hall and oversaw the work done there. His student Edwin Howard Armstrong did most of his work in that laboratory, including the receiver and transmitter that led to FM radio.⁠[14][3]

His students also included Gano Dunn, Robert Millikan, Irving Langmuir, John Harold Morecroft and Alfred N. Goldsmith, who earned his doctorate under him.⁠[2][14]

His work on carrier-wave detection and current analysis later found applications in radio broadcasting; he also worked on multiplex telegraphy, early radio transmitter design and electrical network theory.⁠[13][3]

The history published by Columbia University’s Department of Physics calls him the central figure of the department’s early years and records that he chaired it for many years; under his leadership the department’s laboratory building was completed in 1925.⁠[17]

The Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography calls him a popular and outstanding teacher, and the Encyclopedia of World Biography a popular and eloquent platform speaker and a skillful interpreter of scientific learning to laymen; the Norfolk Historical Society’s sketch says he wrote scores of scientific treatises and was a sought-after lecturer who could explain scientific complexities to large lay audiences. The record of the physics department kept by the American Institute of Physics lists him as chair, with dates unknown, before George Pegram (1911–1945).⁠[3][3][5][18]

The Columbia Engineering bulletin calls Irving Langmuir, who graduated in 1903, an early student of his and says that Edwin Howard Armstrong, then an engineering student, worked with him on experiments with the Audion tube in the basement of Philosophy Hall, through which Armstrong found how to amplify radio signals with regenerative circuits. The electrical engineering department’s history calls Armstrong the most influential of his students, one who began at Columbia as a student and stayed as a member of the faculty; a caption on the Columbia 250 page describes Edwin Howard Armstrong as “Pupin’s associate in research.”⁠[13][14][8]

The Columbia Engineering bulletin also records what these two students went on to do: Irving Langmuir spent a long career at the research laboratory of General ElectricGE AerospaceGE Aerospace is the name under which General Electric Company operates, a jet engine maker listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker GE.Open the full entry and received the Nobel PrizeNobel PrizeThe Nobel Prize is an international award established under the will of Alfred Nobel, comprising five prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace, awarded since 1901; its funds are managed by the Nobel Foundation, whose Board is based in Stockholm. The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, established in 1968, is not a Nobel Prize.Open the full entry in Chemistry in 1932; Edwin Howard Armstrong graduated in 1913, invented the superheterodyne circuit while serving in France in the First World War and improved frequency modulation after it, and in 2003 the United States government designated the laboratory in Philosophy Hall a National Historic Landmark in recognition of his contributions. The electrical engineering department’s history says that John Harold Morecroft published Principles of Radio Communications in 1921 and later became president of the IRE, and that Alfred N. Goldsmith helped found one of the two associations that merged to form the IRE, whose founding meeting was held in Columbia’s Fayerweather Hall on May 14, 1912, and remained editor of the IRE’s Proceedings for 42 years.⁠[13][14]

In 1911 he became consul of the Kingdom of Serbia in New York; a release issued by Serbia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2022 describes the post as Honorary Consul of Serbia to the United States.⁠[9][19]

During the Balkan War and the First World War he was active in public affairs and led philanthropic and humanitarian efforts for Serbs.⁠[3]

Dragan Vujošević, president of the Serbian National Defence Council of America, said at a commemoration in 2022 that Michael I. Pupin was the first president of the Serbian National Defence, founded in 1914, and that he helped organize the Serbian diaspora in the United States to support Serbia during the First World War.⁠[19]

During the First World War he served on the National Research Council; Contemporary Authors credits him with developing, under President Woodrow WilsonWoodrow WilsonWoodrow Wilson (1856–1924) was an American scholar and politician who served as president of Princeton University and governor of New Jersey and was the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921, leading the country through World War I and proposing the League of Nations.Open the full entry, sonar that could locate enemy submarines, and the profile published by Columbia University’s Department of Electrical Engineering states that he played a key role in founding the National Research Council. He was also a member of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.⁠[6][12]

The Institute Mihajlo Pupin’s account says he kept in close touch with his compatriots, helped them in various ways and “set up a number of aid funds.” At the 2022 commemoration Olgica Vlačić, Consul Gerant at the Consulate General of the Republic of Serbia in New York, spoke of how proud he was of his homeland and his Serbian origin as well as of his new country, the United States, and said that it was possible to be a good Serb and a good American at the same time and to love both countries as he did; the Ministry’s release describes the Serbian National Defence as “the oldest Serbian association in America” and places the Serbian National Defence Council of America in Chicago.⁠[4][19]

Contemporary Authors adds that during the war he worked on telephone communication between aircraft and on improving electronic communication with submarines, calls him a founder of the American Physical Society as well as of the National Research Council, and says he provided much of the funding of the American Mathematical Society. The Columbia Alumni Association’s page credits him with inventing sonar.⁠[6][7]

In 1915 he was made a Fellow of both the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) and the AIEE; the AIEE’s files hold his application for transfer to the grade of Fellow dated May 8, 1915.⁠[2][15]

He was president of the IRE in 1917 and of the AIEE in 1925–1926; the Journal of the AIEE announced him as president-elect in June 1925.⁠[2][15]

Contemporary Authors lists him as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1925–1926; the Institute Mihajlo Pupin’s account adds that he also served as president or vice-president of bodies such as the New York Academy of Sciences and the Radio Institute of America.⁠[6][4]

Contemporary Authors also lists him as a member of the American Physical Society, the American Mathematical Society, the American Philosophical Society, the New York Academy of Sciences and Sigma Xi, as a former chair of the Engineering Foundation, and as president of the University Club in 1930–1931. The AIEE file further contains the personal references for his transfer to Fellow, dated May 10, 1915, from S. S. Wheeler, C. T. Hutchinson, Louis Duncan, Gano Dunn, J. J. Carty and F. B. Crocker, a personal classification sheet of November 19, 1917, a member biography of May 1934 and a biography dated December 21, 1934. The electrical engineering department’s history names him with Gano Dunn, Cyprien Mailloux and Arthur V. Loughren as four Columbia figures who all became presidents of the AIEE, and calls Francis Bacon Crocker an early AIEE president.⁠[6][15][14]

In 1919 he served as an adviser to the Yugoslav delegation at the Paris Peace Conference.⁠[3][6]

The Institute Mihajlo Pupin’s account judges that he made a considerable contribution to the drawing of Yugoslavia’s frontiers in 1919. Dragan Vujošević said at the 2022 commemoration that his diplomatic efforts drew on his friendship with Woodrow Wilson and that, as a result, his birthplace of Idvor became part of the Kingdom of Serbia after the war.⁠[4][19]

Contemporary Authors describes his position with the delegation as scientific advisor; the Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography calls him prominent in public affairs.⁠[6][3]

In 1920 the AIEE awarded him the Edison Medal “For his work in mathematical physics and its application to the electric transmission of intelligence.”⁠[2][6]

In 1924 the IRE awarded him its Medal of Honor; the citation opens “In recognition of his fundamental contributions in the field of electrical tuning” and goes on to mention the rectification of alternating currents used in signalling.⁠[2]

In 1923 his autobiography, From Immigrant to Inventor, was published by Scribner in New York and became a best-seller.⁠[1][6][3]

In 1924 the book won the Pulitzer Prize for biography, which carried 1,000 dollars and was given for “the best American biography teaching patriotic and unselfish services to the people.” The official Pulitzer Prize record prints the author’s name as Michael Idvorsky Pupin.⁠[20][1]

Contemporary Authors says the autobiography tells his life and argues that science can cure many of the world’s ills, and that it describes the National Research Council as the “mobilized scientific intellect” of the United States. Reviewing the book in The New York Times Book Review of October 14, 1923, Henry B. Fuller praised its “Richness of temperament, and activity of imagination” and noted the author’s declaration that scientific research brings people closer to divinity than any man-made theology.⁠[6]

The Pulitzer record states that the terms of the prize excluded George WashingtonGeorge WashingtonGeorge Washington (1732–1799) was the first president of the United States, serving from 1789 to 1797. Earlier he commanded the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War and presided over the Constitutional Convention of 1787.Open the full entry and Abraham LincolnAbraham LincolnAbraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th president of the United States (1861–1865). Born to a frontier farming family in Kentucky, he had less than a year of formal schooling, taught himself law, and served in the Illinois legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives before winning the presidency as the Republican candidate in 1860. During the Civil War he preserved the Union, issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and pushed the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery through Congress. He was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre in Washington on April 14, 1865, and died the next day.Open the full entry as subjects, “as too obvious.” Contemporary Authors dates the prize to 1923, calling it a prize for autobiography in its list of honors and for biography in its text; the Norfolk Historical Society’s sketch calls him the 1924 winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Letters; and the Columbia Alumni Association’s page says the book was first published in 1922. The Encyclopedia of World Biography calls the autobiography the best source on his life and lists a reprint issued by Arno Press in 1980. The same record names the jury as Burton J. Hendrick and Albert J. Beveridge.⁠[20][6][7][3][5]

The Columbia 250 page quotes a remark of his: “The greatest scientists in the world have never discovered how to make grass into milk.”⁠[8]

In 1931 he retired from Columbia and became professor emeritus.⁠[1][3]

The AIEE’s files hold a notice dated October 17, 1931, of the award of the John Fritz Medal to him; he was the medal’s recipient for 1932.⁠[15][21]

The Institute Mihajlo Pupin’s account dates his retirement to 1929. Contemporary Authors says that after retiring he continued scientific work with an assistant. The AIEE file holds a notice of March 1932 that he received the 1932 John Fritz Medal, the presentation address by Bancroft Gherardi, and a paper of his dated March 1932, “The Power Age and Modern Civilization.”⁠[4][6][15]

He died in New York City on March 12, 1935, after an illness. Contemporary Authors gives the cause as kidney failure; the sketch published by the Norfolk Historical Society gives heart disease and kidney failure.⁠[1][2][11][6][5]

He was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York City.⁠[5][10][19]

The Norfolk Historical Society’s sketch says he died at the age of 76 after several years of failing health; The New York Times of March 13, 1935, headed its article “Dr. Michael I. Pupin Dies in Coma at 76.” By the sketch’s account he lay in state for thirty days at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan before burial. The sketch also says that in New York City he lived in an apartment.⁠[5][2][6]

The AIEE adopted a resolution in his memory dated March 29, 1935, and its file holds a member file dated March 13, 1935, correspondence about his death between H. H. Henline and Varvara Pupin Smith from March 13 to April 19, 1935, and obituaries dated from March 12 to May 17, 1935, from the World Telegram, Science and newspapers that the catalog does not identify. Bergen Davis wrote his memoir for volume 19 (1938) of the Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, and Dugald C. Jackson published a memorial of him in volume 72, number 10 (1938) of the Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The Columbia 250 biography says he left a significant portion of his estate to the university.⁠[15][3][8]

In 1888 he married Sarah Katherine Jackson in a Greek Orthodox church in London. The Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography describes her as a young widow; the Engineering and Technology History Wiki spells her name Sarah Catharine Jackson and says she was from New York.⁠[3][10][2]

They had one daughter, named Varvara in the Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography and Barbara in the Engineering and Technology History Wiki. The former dates his wife’s death to 1896; the latter and Contemporary Authors give 1897.⁠[3][2][6]

The Norfolk Historical Society’s sketch calls his wife the sister of a fellow student and places the wedding at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral in London, before his classes at Columbia began. The sketch writes the name of their only child as Varvara (Barbara), and the 1935 correspondence in the AIEE file gives it as Varvara Pupin Smith. Contemporary Authors gives his religion as Serbian Orthodox.⁠[5][15][6]

The Norfolk Historical Society’s sketch relates that he lapsed into a coma with severe pneumonia, that his wife died five days before he regained consciousness, of pneumonia contracted from him, and that he then suffered a nervous breakdown.⁠[5]

By the sketch’s account the illness struck two months after his X-ray success: having walked to Columbia through Central Park, he collapsed halfway through his first class, and his wife nursed him while he lay in a coma. Eighteen months after her death he returned to Columbia for the sake of his only child.⁠[5]

The Norfolk Historical Society’s sketch relates that after his wife’s death a physician friend recommended Norfolk, ConnecticutConnecticutConnecticut is a U.S. state in the New England region. Its capital is Hartford and its largest city is Bridgeport (2010 census). It entered the Union on January 9, 1788, as the 5th state, and had a population of 3,605,944 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry, as a place to recover; in 1905 he decided to build an estate and farm on the west side of the town, with a farm named Hemlock Hill Farm and a stone house designed by the architect Henry Hornbostel.⁠[5]

The sketch relates that he first rented a house in Norfolk facing Haystack Mountain and sat for weeks on its piazza without his depression lifting. Dr. Frederic Dennis, a Norfolk native and a colleague at Columbia, tried in vain to cheer him and then drove up to his door in a yellow roundabout drawn by two Cobb horses from his stud farm on Dennis Hill, gave him the horses and said they needed training. The sketch calls this “just the right medicine”: he threw himself into the task, and with him driving, Comet and Princess Rose took first prize at the Madison Square Garden horse show.⁠[5]

The sketch quotes his description of Norfolk as “my real American home.”⁠[5]

By the sketch’s account he paid for the estate out of the proceeds of the sale to the American Telephone and Telegraph Co.; Henry Hornbostel, whom the sketch credits with the design of the Williamsburg Bridge in New York, designed a large stone mansion recalling Serbia, with elaborate stonework by craftsmen from Serbia, and a caption reads “Pupin’s Serbian Castle on Norfolk’s West Side.” He spent his summers there and called Norfolk “this blessed spot” where he had regained his health and happiness; the sketch itself calls the town his “American Idvor.” He rode his Irish Hunter, Christy, from the farm into town to visit friends.⁠[5]

The sketch describes him as known in Norfolk as an eccentric and as an entertaining fixture at town meetings, where he was not bashful about giving his views. It retells an episode from his autobiography: when he proposed at a town meeting that the roads be improved to attract more summer people, the elderly Norfolk native John Nettleton replied that Norfolk’s roads had always been just fine for the townspeople and warned against newcomers who brought “vanity and false pride” from the city, and he felt mortified and ostracized by the locals; later he trained a stray dog that no one else in town could control, whereupon Nettleton, impressed by his patience and kindness with the animal, shook his hand and said that a man who could train such a cantankerous, unruly dog must be a good person. The two became good friends, and the townspeople, whom the sketch calls notoriously standoffish, accepted him. A caption on the page reads “John Nettleton House – Laurel Way (1778, still standing).”⁠[5]

The Norfolk Historical Society’s sketch, which cites no sources, describes him and Nikola Tesla as fellow Serbians who competed with each other and with many other scientists for patents and states that he based his induction-coil patent on Tesla’s alternating-current oscillator; it contrasts Tesla, whom it calls somewhat reclusive, with Michael I. Pupin, whom it calls a skilled self-promoter who “loved the spotlight.”⁠[5]

By the sketch’s account he testified in a bitterly contested court case of 1915 over wireless telegraphy that in his opinion Guglielmo Marconi had invented wireless; Tesla felt hurt and betrayed and would not speak to him for years. The sketch continues that he came to regret the testimony, that on his deathbed in 1935 he begged Tesla to accept his apology, that Tesla reluctantly visited him, that he wept uncontrollably, and that he died a few days later.⁠[5]

Besides the autobiography, his books are Thermodynamics of Reversible Cycles in Gases and Saturated Vapors, edited by Max Osterberg and published by J. Wiley and Sons in 1894, and The New Reformation: From Physical to Spiritual Realities (1927) and Romance of the Machine (1930), both published by Scribner.⁠[6][3]

From Immigrant to Inventor was reprinted in 1960 with a foreword by Freeman J. Dyson.⁠[6]

The Encyclopedia of World Biography counts about 70 technical articles and reports and 34 patents; the Institute Mihajlo Pupin’s account dates the 34 patents to the years 1894 to 1934 and places almost all of them in telegraphy, telephony and radio. Contemporary Authors gives the number of patents as 24.⁠[3][4][6]

The Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography calls him an accomplished writer and refers readers to Poggendorff (volume VI) for the list of his publications and to the National Cyclopaedia of American Biography (volume XXVI, 1937) and the Dictionary of American Biography (supplement 1, 1944) for his life. The Columbia 250 biography and the Columbia University Libraries’ exhibition text also give the number of his patents as 34; the Norfolk Historical Society’s sketch mentions among his later patents one for what it calls an electronic resonator, which allowed radios to be tuned without interference. The exhibition text adds that Columbia University’s holdings include architectural drawings, blueprints and graphs, photographs, portraits, awards and diplomas.⁠[3][8][16][5]

He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences; the Academy’s member directory gives 1905 as the year of his election, and the Columbia University Department of Physics profile gives 1904. The profile also credits him with five medals and 18 honorary degrees.⁠[22][11][3]

In 1928 he received the Washington Award, administered by the Western Society of Engineers; the citation honors his devotion to scientific research and credits his inventions with aiding “the development of long distance telephone and radio broadcasting.”⁠[23][6]

By the list in Contemporary Authors his honorary degrees were doctorates of laws from New York UniversityNew York UniversityNew York University is a private university in New York City, founded in 1831, and one of the largest private universities in the United States.Open the full entry and the University of California, a doctorate of humane letters from George Washington UniversityGeorge Washington UniversityGeorge Washington University (officially The George Washington University) is a university in Washington, D.C., United States, whose forerunner was Columbian College.Open the full entry, doctorates of science from Princeton UniversityPrinceton UniversityPrinceton University is a private university and Ivy League member in Princeton, New Jersey. Chartered on October 22, 1746 as the College of New Jersey, it moved to Princeton in 1756 and adopted its present name in 1896. Undergraduate education leads to A.B. and B.S.E. degrees and emphasizes small-group discussion, independent research and residential college life. Graduate education spans the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and engineering. As of October 2026, Christopher L. Eisgruber was president. Its 2026–27 operating budget was $3.407 billion, including $342 million for undergraduate aid.Open the full entry, Columbia University and Union College, degrees that the list abbreviates as L.L.P. from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Rochester, and further degrees from Muhlenberg College, Marietta College, Rutgers University, Delaware University, Kenyon College, Brown UniversityBrown UniversityBrown University is a private nonprofit research university in Providence, Rhode Island, and a member of the Ivy League. Chartered by Rhode Island's colonial legislature in 1764, it is known for its undergraduate Open Curriculum, which has no common required core. Christina H. Paxson, president since July 2012, announced on August 3, 2026, that the 2026–27 academic year would be her last in office. As of October 1, 2026, the search for Brown's 20th president remained underway.Open the full entry, Middlebury College, the University of Belgrade and the University of Prague; the same work lists Serbia’s Order of the White Eagle and Czechoslovakia’s Order of the White Lion. The Columbia 250 biography lists an honorary Sc.D. of 1904 and, like the physics department’s profile, puts his election to the National Academy of Sciences in the same year.⁠[6][8]

The list in Contemporary Authors also has the Elliot Cresson Medal of the Franklin Institute (1902), a prize of the French Academy of 1916 that it prints as “Herbert Prize,” the Medal of Honor of the Radio Institute of America and the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Social Sciences, both without a year, and his naming as Councilor of the National Industrial Conference Board in 1929; it enters the 1928 award of the Western Society of Engineers as the Washington Medal for Engineering and the 1932 medal as the John Fritz Gold Medal, and it lists the IRE award as the Gold Medal of Honor of the Institute of Radio Engineers. The Institute Mihajlo Pupin’s account says he received a large number of diplomas and medals for his inventions.⁠[6][4]

The Norfolk Historical Society’s sketch speaks of twenty honorary degrees and calls him president of the National Academy of Science; the Academy’s member directory records him as a member. The sketch adds that he associated with President Warren G. HardingWarren G. HardingWarren G. Harding (1865–1923) was an American newspaper publisher and politician who served as lieutenant governor of Ohio and as a U.S. senator before becoming the 29th president of the United States in March 1921; he died in office in August 1923.Open the full entry, Andrew CarnegieAndrew CarnegieAndrew Carnegie (1835–1919) was a Scottish-born American industrialist and philanthropist who led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century and, after retiring from business, became known for large-scale giving and the foundations he created.Open the full entry and Albert EinsteinAlbert EinsteinAlbert Einstein (1879–1955) was a German-born physicist who formulated the special theory of relativity in 1905 and the general theory in 1915 and received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect. From 1933 until his death he was a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, United States.Open the full entry and reproduces a photograph captioned “Albert Einstein Greets Pupin – 1934.”⁠[5][22]

Shortly after his death the Trustees of Columbia University named the university’s physics laboratory building “Pupin Laboratories” in his honor. The building, also known as Pupin Hall or the Pupin Physics Laboratories, was designed by the firm McKim, Mead & White and still houses the Department of Physics.⁠[11][17][24][18][25]

The Columbia 250 biography says the building dates from 1927 and was named Pupin Hall in 1935; Contemporary Authors says that Columbia renamed the building that housed his former laboratory the Pupin Physics Laboratory, that the preliminary scientific investigations for the first atomic bomb were made there and that twenty-eight American scientists from the laboratory went on to receive the Nobel Prize. The American Institute of Physics record calls the discovery of heavy hydrogen by Harold Clayton Urey in 1931 the first important work done in the new Pupin Laboratory; the physics department’s page describes the building as nearly 100 years old, says it is named for Mihajlo (Michael) Idvorski Pupin, a member of the Columbia physics faculty from 1889 to 1931, and calls it the home of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, the Rutherfurd Observatory and the Center for Theoretical Physics.⁠[8][6][18][24]

In December 1965 the building became the first on the Columbia campus to enter the National Historic Landmark program, in commemoration of the splitting of the atom in its basement laboratory; the National Park Service’s nomination form dates that experiment to January 25, 1939, and records that it was carried out by John R. Dunning and several colleagues. Nuclear research experiments of the early Manhattan ProjectManhattan ProjectThe Manhattan Project was the United States program that developed the atomic bomb during the Second World War, managed from 1942 by the Manhattan Engineer District of the Army Corps of Engineers with British and Canadian participation. It built plants and laboratories at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Hanford, Washington, and Los Alamos, New Mexico, among other sites, carried out the first nuclear test in 1945, and produced the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, later that year; after the war its functions passed to the civilian Atomic Energy Commission.Open the full entry were also conducted in the building.⁠[26][25][24]

The National Park Service form describes a ten-story brick building with stone trim at Broadway and West 120th Street whose basement housed the cyclotron. It relates that Enrico FermiEnrico FermiEnrico Fermi (1901–1954) was an Italian-American physicist who received the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics and in 1942 led the team that achieved the first controlled nuclear chain reaction in Chicago.Open the full entry had just joined the Columbia faculty when news of the fission result obtained in Copenhagen arrived, about ten days before the Columbia experiment, and that Fermi was called to Washington on the day of the experiment, so that John R. Dunning carried it out with several colleagues, E. T. Booth and F. G. Slack having helped to prepare it; in his notebook for January 25 Dunning recorded his belief that a new phenomenon of far-reaching consequences had been observed, and he also wrote “Here is real atomic energy”; that this success brought federal support for atomic research at Columbia, which led to the Manhattan District project; and that the cyclotron was dismantled in 1964 and sent to the Smithsonian InstitutionSmithsonian InstitutionThe Smithsonian Institution is a museum, education and research institution created by the U.S. Congress in 1846 with the bequest of the English scientist James Smithson. Based in Washington, D.C., it runs museums such as the National Air and Space Museum and the National Museum of Natural History, as well as the National Zoo.Open the full entry while its magnet remained in the laboratory. The form was prepared by Cecil McKithan in March 1978.⁠[25]

In 1973 Chien-Shiung WuChien-Shiung WuChien-Shiung Wu (1912–1997) was a Chinese-born American experimental physicist who spent most of her career at Columbia University and worked on the Manhattan Project. Her cobalt-60 beta-decay experiment of 1956–1957, carried out with collaborators, provided the first experimental proof that parity is not conserved in weak interactions.Open the full entry was appointed the first Michael I. Pupin Professor of Physics at Columbia University, a chair in physics that bears his name.⁠[27][28]

The American Institute of Physics record of Chien-Shiung Wu dates her tenure as Michael I. Pupin Professor of Physics to 1972–1981. The same record lists her as Michael I. Pupin Professor Emeritus of Physics from 1981 to 1997.⁠[29]

The Columbia Engineering School Alumni Association created the Pupin Medal in 1958; Chien-Shiung Wu was among its recipients.⁠[6][28]

The Columbia 250 biography gives the medal’s full name as the Pupin Medal for Service to the Nation and calls it the most prestigious prize of the Engineering School. Captions on the same page record a Yugoslav president presenting a bust of him to Columbia and the Tesla Society celebrating his birthday at Columbia.⁠[8]

The Memorial Complex in Idvor consists of his home, the Old School — the elementary school he attended — and the National Home, which the regional heritage institute’s page calls “Pupin’s foundation”; the complex was given the status of a cultural monument and memorial center in 1957 and that of a cultural monument of exceptional significance in 1990.⁠[30]

The heritage institute describes his house in Idvor as a larger type of the Pannonian house, otherwise known as “the clod house,” built entirely of brick, plastered and painted, with its gable to the street as is typical of houses in Vojvodina; it was first restored in 1979, was given its present appearance by a reconstruction in 2004 and is now an ethnographic museum, with furniture that did not precisely belong to his parents but is authentic for the period when he lived there, and a small street-side room arranged as a study with several photographs of him. The Old School, built in 1843, stands at the edge of the village park next to the National Home and served as the school until 1979, when Idvor got a new, modern school building. The institute’s page says that the house of one of the most eminent physicists is “a target of a sort of a pilgrimage.”⁠[30]

Yugoslavia issued a postage stamp in his honor in 1979. For the centennial of the IEEE in 1984, a poll of the profession conducted by IEEE Spectrum placed him among the ten top educators. In 2011 he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, which lists U.S. Patent No. 761,995 for him.⁠[6][14][9]

That poll was published as the “Centennial Hall of Fame” in IEEE Spectrum in April 1984; three of the ten educators — Michael I. Pupin, Jacob Millman and Mischa Schwartz — were Columbia faculty, more than from any other institution. The National Inventors Hall of Fame registers his invention as “Loading Coil for Long Distance Telephony.” The IEEE Archives in Piscataway, New Jersey, hold a file of sixteen documents on him, and the Norfolk Historical Society’s page mentions a 1993 documentary on his life produced by the Tesla Society of NYC.⁠[14][9][15][5]

On March 13, 2022, clergy of the Serbian Orthodox Church, a representative of the Consulate General of Serbia in New York and others held a commemoration at Woodlawn Cemetery marking 87 years since his death.⁠[19]

The memorial service of March 13, 2022, was conducted by Father Djokan Majstorović of the Church of St. John the Baptist in Paterson and Father Milan Dragović of the Church of St. Sava in New York, and members of the “Drina” Cultural and Artistic Society of Paterson, New Jersey, gave a short program; many citizens of the United States and Serbia attended, one of whom had travelled from Idvor.⁠[19]

The Columbia Alumni Association’s page calls him an American physicist and writer and one of the greatest scientists of the early 20th century, says he emigrated to the United States as a teenager, and credits him with making telephone communication practical and inexpensive; the further reading listed by the Engineering and Technology History Wiki consists of his autobiography and the article printed by The New York Times on March 13, 1935.⁠[7][2]

Columbia University: Official website: https://www.columbia.edu/ (opens in a new window).⁠[31]

Columbia University Department of Physics: Official website: https://www.physics.columbia.edu/ (opens in a new window).⁠[32]

National Academy of Sciences: Official website: https://www.nasonline.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[33]

The Pulitzer Prizes: Official website: https://www.pulitzer.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[34]

Institute Mihajlo Pupin: Official website: https://www.pupin.rs/en/home/ (opens in a new window).⁠[35]