Alexander Stepanovich Popov

Alexander Stepanovich Popov (Russian: Алекса́ндр Степа́нович Попо́в; March 16 1859 – January 13 1906) was a Russian physicist who was the first person to demonstrate the practical application of electromagnetic radio waves.

Beginning in the early 1890s he continued the experiments of other radio pioneers, such as Heinrich Hertz. In 1894 he built his first radio receiver, a version of the coherer. Further refined as a lightning detector, it was presented to the Russian Physical and Chemical Society on May 7, 1895—the day has been celebrated in the Russian Federation as Radio Day. The paper on his findings was published the same year. On March 24, 1896, he demonstrated transmission of radio waves between different campus buildings in St Petersburg. He demonstrated ship-to-shore communication over a distance of 6 miles in 1898 and 30 miles in 1899.