Alexander Stepanovich Popov

Alexander Stepanovich Popov – a Russian physicist and electrical engineer, the founder of the radio engineering scientific school, a professor, an inventor in the field of radio communications, an honorary electrical engineer, and a State Councillor. The future inventor of the radio was born into a large family of a clergyman in the settlement of Turinskie Rudniki in the Urals. Popov received his primary education at the Dalmatov and Yekaterinburg theological schools, after which he entered the Perm Theological Academy. In 1877 Popov was admitted without examinations to the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Saint Petersburg University. Student life proved difficult: Popov had to combine his studies with tutoring and work as an electrician to support himself. Despite financial hardships and a forced academic leave due to illness, he successfully defended his candidate thesis in 1882 and remained at the university.

 

In 1883 Popov began teaching at the Mine Officers' Class in Kronstadt. The institution housed well-equipped electrotechnical laboratories. Popov worked in Kronstadt for 18 years, also taught at the Naval Engineering School, and during the summers managed the power station at the Nizhny Novgorod Fair. It was here that he conducted research in electromagnetism which led to the creation of wireless communication. In 1889 Popov publicly declared for the first time the possibility of using electromagnetic waves to transmit information, and on May 7, 1895, at a meeting of the Russian Physico-Chemical Society the scientist demonstrated his first radio receiver, marking the beginning of a new era in the history of communications. In subsequent years Popov successfully increased the range of radio transmission and in 1900, during the rescue operation of the battleship General-Admiral Apraksin, which had run aground on rocks, he achieved a range of more than 45 kilometers. His invention played an important role in equipping the Russian fleet. Alexander Stepanovich Popov died on December 31, 1905, of a stroke.