On December 12, Google noted another important figure. This time the heroine of Doodle is the physicist Maria Telkes, known as the “Queen of the Sun”. The woman was a pioneer of solar energy.
On Monday, Google changed its logo to an image associated with Maria Telkes, also known as the “Queen of the Sun.” A new doodle from Google celebrates the birth of a solar energy researcher who would have turned 122 today.
Hungarian scientist Maria Telkes, the heroine of Google Doodle.
Maria Telkes was born on December 12, 1900 in Budapest. After studying physics and chemistry at the University of Warsaw and earning her doctorate, she moved to the United States in 1925. She found her place at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where from 1939 she was engaged in the practical use of solar energy.
During World War II, the army turned to her for help. She invented a portable solar-powered desalination device that came to be used in survival kits for downed airmen and life rafts on warships. He saved the lives of many survivors and airmen during the Pacific War.
After the end of the war, she returned to her research work at MIT. This time she was working on a project for a house heated only by solar energy. However, she proposed and created an unsuccessful concept, which resulted in the university leadership excluding her from the university committee on solar energy.
However, this briefly stopped her, because in 1948, together with the architect Eleanor Raymond, they created the Dover House of the Sun, funded by philanthropists. This time, the solar-only home was successful and kept warm even during the harsh Massachusetts winter. Women gave many interviews and popularized the term “solar energy”.
Inventions of Maria Telkes
The Sun House at Dover is Telkes’ most famous invention, but the physicist had many other ideas.
In 1953, the Ford Foundation offered her $45,000. a grant of dollars to develop a solar cooker that will work equally well at different latitudes. The woman took on the task, and her slab design is still in use today.
Another application of solar energy was a device that allowed farmers to dry their crops faster. Interestingly, over time, the composites created for the farmer project were later developed under Telkes’ direction into materials used in the Apollo and Polaris space missions.
Source: Wprost
