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Guglielmo Marconi (1874–1937)

1909 Physics

In recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy.

Guglielmo Marconi, Italian by birth, was the second son of Giuseppe Marconi, an Italian landowner, and Annie Jameson Marconi, descendent of a respected Irish family. Privately educated in Bologna, his birthplace, Florence and Leghorn, he showed an interest in physics and electrical experiments at a young age.

Marconi was about 21 years old when he conducted his first successful experiment by sending wireless signals between two rooms in the attic of his father’s property on the outskirts of Bologna. He spent the following months developing the invention. Unable to find financial backing for his discovery in Italy, Marconi went to England in 1896. In the same year he took out a patent for his wireless telegraphy, and in 1897 he formed the Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company Limited, the name of which was changed in 1900 to Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph Company Limited.

At noon of December 12, 1901, he achieved what the public regarded as a remarkable feat: Marconi sent a signal by wireless telegraphy from Poldhu, Cornwall, England, to Saint John’s, Newfoundland, Canada. This accomplishment was a turning point in Marconi’s life, and the moment when the world acknowledged this man who had diligently worked unnoticed for years. Soon many young physicists were following in his footsteps.

What few know today about this inventor is that he was also a distinguished soldier. Marconi left the army with the rank of Captain in the Navy, and in 1917 he served as a member of the Italian government mission to the United States. Two years later he was a delegate at the Paris Peace Conference. His military and government service, however, never stopped his experiments with shortwave technology.

Inventiveness and persistence sum up the character of this Italian who was at first ignored and then made famous and granted the highest honors, including the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics. Marconi shared the prize for contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy with Karl Ferdinand Braun.

Marconi’s personal life was nearly as dramatic as his discoveries, beginning in 1905 when he married Beatrice O’Brien, the daughter of the 14th Baron Inchiquin. This marriage was annulled in 1927, the same year he married the Countess Bezzi-Scali of Rome. Despite living the high life and mixing with aristocrats, Marconi was a simple man who enjoyed hunting, cycling and automobiles. The Marchese Marconi, the title he received in 1929, died on July 20, 1937, in Rome.

Karl Ferdinand Braun also received half of the prize.