Mária Telkes was a Hungarian American scientist whose pioneering work in photo voltaic power produced a number of innovations, together with the primary solar-powered home, which earned her the nickname “Solar Queen.”
For his contributions to science, Google on Monday devoted an animated Doodle to Telkes on his 122nd birthday. Doodle exhibits only a few of the methods we are able to use photo voltaic power, together with his innovations for a photo voltaic oven, photo voltaic heating system and a solar-powered desalination unit for making seawater drinkable.
Born in Budapest on December 12, 1900, Telkes earned a bachelor’s diploma and Ph.D in chemistry from the College of Budapest earlier than shifting to the US in 1924 to work as a biophysicist at Westinghouse, the place he labored on steel alloys for serving to to transform. warmth to electrical energy. In 1939, he labored on the Massachusetts Institute of Expertise, the place he participated within the college’s Photo voltaic Power Conversion Undertaking.
Throughout World Warfare II, the US authorities recruited Telkes to develop a solar-powered water desalination machine — a life-saving invention that allowed troopers to have protected ingesting water for state of affairs the place entry is tough or non-existent. After the battle, he returned to MIT, changing into an affiliate analysis professor at MIT in 1945.
Whereas at MIT, he designed a photo voltaic heating system for the Dover Solar Home, the primary residential constructing to be heated all through the day. He went on to work at New York College, the place he created a solar-powered oven that’s nonetheless in use at the moment that permits individuals who lack electrical energy to arrange sizzling meals.
In 1952, she was the primary recipient of the Society of Girls Engineers Achievement Award, and in 2012, she was inducted into the Nationwide Inventors Corridor of Fame.
Telkes died in 1995 on the age of 94 whereas making his first go to to his hometown of Budapest since shifting to the US 70 years earlier.
