The Nobel prize for physics was awarded in 1909 to two physicists, Guglielmo Marconi (1874–1937) and Ferdinand Braun (1850–1918), for their development of wireless telegraphy. You may already have heard of Marconi, but Braun seems to have disappeared from general knowledge, even though he made important contributions to a number of fields of science.
Marconi was born in Italy, the son of a wealthy landowner. He was educated by private tutors and later claimed to have studied neither physics nor electrotechnics in the normal manner. This was because he had never formally enrolled in a university. However, he turned out to have a remarkable combination of physical insight, engineering skill and business intuition.
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