Maria Telkes: Why Google honours her today | Science and Technology News
Telkes was an ground breaking scientist recognised for her contributions to solar electrical power technologies.
Hungarian-American scientist Maria Telkes is identified for her contributions to solar electrical power systems.
Telkes, who died in 1995, invented the photo voltaic distiller as properly as the to start with photo voltaic-run heating procedure intended for residences.
On Monday, Google transformed its logo in 12 nations to a doodle, or illustration, in her honour.
This is her story:
Early life
- Telkes was born on December 12, 1900, in Budapest, Hungary. She was the daughter of Aladar and Maria Laban de Telkes.
- Capturing vitality from the solar was an strategy that intrigued the scientist from an early age.
- “I was only 11 when a straightforward university experiment, the melting of sulphur, made me intensively curious about chemistry,” Telkes wrote in 1964. “My mom and dad ended up amused and tolerant, even after a loud but harmless explosion. Avidly reading through science books, I was experimenting.”
- As a freshman at the College of Budapest in Hungary, she once stated that reading through the book Vitality Sources of the Upcoming by Kornel Zelovich was a defining second in her life.
- “The e book defined that the common vitality sources have geographical constraints, specifically in the fewer designed tropical regions, but the solar is immediately overhead in the tropics, and you do not have to check out for it,” she mentioned.
- The guide described how the United States was experimenting with solar power, and she understood that was the place to go following acquiring her degree.
- Telkes afterwards analyzed at Hungary’s Eotvos Lorand College, where by she specialised in actual physical chemistry and attained a PhD in 1924.
Rays and shine! Today’s #GoogleDoodle celebrates the daily life of Dr. Mária Telkes, a pioneer in solar strength who’s identified as The Sunlight Queen 👑
Understand far more about her legacy in this article → https://t.co/pGuuVif9Ra pic.twitter.com/Ks0rgPXIcA
— Google Doodles (@GoogleDoodles) December 12, 2022
Journey to the US
- The future calendar year, Telkes arrived in the US and joined the Cleveland Clinic Foundation as a biophysicist. Through her time there, she labored on technologies that enabled scientists to document brain waves.
- She turned an American citizen in 1937. For the duration of Globe War II, she was doing the job at the Massachusetts Institute of Technological innovation (MIT) as a member of its photo voltaic strength committee.
- “Dr Godfrey Lowell Cabot was the 1st to recognise the relevance of systematic Solar Strength Conversion,” Telkes wrote. “He designed a foundation for this goal at [MIT]. I joined this team, getting one of the rather few women study associates at MIT for the subsequent 13 decades.”
- Amid the war, Telkes designed a photo voltaic-run h2o desalination device, completing a prototype in 1942. Her invention assisted US soldiers posted along seas get crystal clear water.
- MIT also tasked Telkes and her colleagues with creating habitable solar-heated households. On the other hand, her proposed layout unsuccessful and she was taken out from the committee.
‘Impossible points interest me’
- Inspite of the setback, Telkes’s study ongoing. In 1948, at the age of 48, she, in partnership with architect Eleanor Raymond, developed the world’s 1st fashionable home heated with photo voltaic energy.
- “It is the issues supposed to be unachievable that fascination me. I like to do matters they say are unable to be performed,” Telkes mentioned for the duration of an interview in 1942.
- At 53, she received a $45,000 grant from the Ford Basis to build a common photo voltaic oven.
‘The Sunlight Queen’
- In 1972, Telkes also aided make the 1st dwelling to deliver equally heat and electric power from the sun. 9 a long time later on, she served the US government to acquire the initially absolutely photo voltaic-driven dwelling.
- She been given the Society of Females Engineers Achievement Award in 1952. She retired at 77 and gained a life time achievement award from the Nationwide Academy of Sciences Constructing Investigation Advisory Board.
- Telkes also has a lot more than 20 patents to her credit rating. Her contributions to the photo voltaic electrical power discipline attained her the nickname the “Sun Queen”.
- Just after spending several decades in the US, Telkes returned in 1995 to Hungary, exactly where she handed absent 10 times right before her 95th birthday.