Birth and Education
Lee De Forest was born in 1873 in Council Bluffs, Iowa, the son of Anna Margaret (née Robbins) and Henry Swift De Forest.
His father was a Congregational Church minister who hoped that his son would also become a minister. Henry Swift DeForest accepted the position of President of Talladega College, a traditionally African American school, in Talladega, Alabama, where Lee spent most of his youth. Many citizens of the white community resented his father's efforts to educate African Americans. Growing up, De Forest had several friends among the black children of the town.
De Forest attended Mount Hermon School, and in 1893 enrolled at the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University in Connecticut. As an inquisitive young inventor, he tapped into the electrical system at Yale one evening and completely blacked out the entire campus, causing his suspension. He was eventually allowed to complete his studies, receiving his bachelor's degree in 1896. He paid part of his tuition with the income from his mechanical and gaming inventions. De Forest earned his Ph.D. degree in 1899 with a dissertation on radio waves, supervised by theoretical physicist Willard Gibbs. For the next two years, he was on faculty at Armour Institute of Technology and Lewis Institute (merging in 1940 to become Illinois Institute of Technology physics department) and conducted his first long-distance broadcasts from the university.
Read more about this topic: Lee De Forest
Famous quotes containing the words birth and, birth and/or education:
“Not yet the thirtieth year, the thirtieth
Station where time reverses his light heels
To run both ways, and makes of forward back;
Whose long co-ordinates are birth and death....”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“It must appear impossible, that theism could, from reasoning, have been the primary religion of human race, and have afterwards, by its corruption, given birth to polytheism and to all the various superstitions of the heathen world. Reason, when obvious, prevents these corruptions: When abstruse, it keeps the principles entirely from the knowledge of the vulgar, who are alone liable to corrupt any principle or opinion.
”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“Nature has taken more care than the fondest parent for the education and refinement of her children. Consider the silent influence which flowers exert, no less upon the ditcher in the meadow than the lady in the bower. When I walk in the woods, I am reminded that a wise purveyor has been there before me; my most delicate experience is typified there.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)