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)
“At birth man is offered only one choice—the choice of his death. But if this choice is governed by distaste for his own existence, his life will never have been more than meaningless.”
—Jean-Pierre Melville (1917–1973)
“A two-year-old can be taught to curb his aggressions completely if the parents employ strong enough methods, but the achievement of such control at an early age may be bought at a price which few parents today would be willing to pay. The slow education for control demands much more parental time and patience at the beginning, but the child who learns control in this way will be the child who acquires healthy self-discipline later.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)