Peter Higgs: I wouldn't be productive enough for today's academic system | Sc... Peter Higgs, the British physicist who gave his name to the Higgs boson, believes no university would employ him in today's academic system because he would not be considered "productive" enough. The emeritus professor at Edinburgh University, who says he has never sent an email, browsed the internet or even made a mobile phone call, published fewer than 10 papers after his groundbreaking work, which identified the mechanism by which subatomic material acquires mass, was published in 1964. He doubts a similar breakthrough could be achieved in today's academic culture, because of the expectations on academics to collaborate and keep churning out papers. He said: "It's difficult to imagine how I would ever have enough peace and quiet in the present sort of climate to do what I did in 1964.
" Speaking to the Guardian en route to Stockholm to receive the 2013 Nobel prize for science, Higgs, 84, said he would almost certainly have been sacked had he not been nominated for the Nobel in 1980. Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived.
Additional notes from the author: If you want to learn more about Tesla, I highly recommend reading Tesla: Man Out of Time Also, this Badass of the week by Ben Thompson is what originally inspired me to write a comic about Tesla. Ben's also got a book out which is packed full of awesome. There's an old movie from the 80s on Netflix Instant Queue right now about Tesla: The Secret of Nikola Tesla. It's corny and full of bad acting, but it paints a fairly accurate depiction of his life.
The drunk history of Tesla is quite awesome, too. Nikola Tesla. Nikola Tesla (Serbian Cyrillic: Никола Тесла; 10 July 1856 – 7 January 1943) was a Serbian-American[3][4] inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, physicist, and futurist who is best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system.[5] Born and raised in the Austrian Empire, Tesla received an advanced education in engineering and physics in the 1870s and gained practical experience in the early 1880s working in telephony and at Continental Edison in the new electric power industry.
He emigrated to the United States in 1884, where he would become a naturalized citizen. He worked for a short time at the Edison Machine Works in New York City before he struck out on his own. With the help of partners to finance and market his ideas, Tesla set up laboratories and companies in New York to develop a range of electrical and mechanical devices. Early years Tesla's baptismal record, 28 June 1856 Working at Edison A move to the US.
War of Currents. In the War of Currents era (sometimes, War of the Currents or Battle of Currents) in the late 1880s, George Westinghouse and Thomas Edison became adversaries due to Edison's promotion of direct current (DC) for electric power distribution over alternating current (AC). Thomas Edison, American inventor and businessman, known as "The Wizard of Menlo Park", pushed for the development of a DC power network. George Westinghouse, American entrepreneur and engineer, financially backed the development of a practical AC power network. Edison's direct-current system generated and distributed electric power at the same voltage as used by the customer's lamps and motors. This meant that the current in transmission was relatively large, and so heavy conductors were required and transmission distances were limited, to about a mile (kilometre); otherwise transmission losses would make the system uneconomical.
The "War of Currents" is often personified as Westinghouse vs. DC[edit] AC[edit] Nikola Tesla: The Genius Who Lit the World. This is the documentary film about Nikola Tesla, the scientist and inventor, one of the greatest men in history. Nikola Tesla was born on July 10,1856 in Smiljan, Lika in what later became Yugoslavia. His father, Milutin Tesla was a Serbian orthodox priest and his mother Djuka Mandic was an inventor in her own right of household appliances. Tesla studied at the Polytechnic Institute in Graz, Austria and the University of Prague.
He began his career as an electrical engineer with a telephone company in Budapest in 1881. Before going to America, Tesla joined Continental Edison Company in Paris where he designed dynamos. Young Nikola Tesla came to the United States in 1884. Direct current flows continuously in one direction; alternating current changes direction 50 or 60 times per second, and can be stepped up to very high voltage levels, minimizing power loss across great distances.
Tesla's A-C induction motor is widely used throughout the world in industry and household appliances.