The New Reformation: from Physical to Spiritual Realities

Abstract

MICHAEL PUPIN is a romantic figure in the world of science. He has told us the story of his life in his autobiography, “From Immigrant to Inventor” (reviewed in NATURE of Feb. 9, 1924), a pilgrimage on the stony path trodden by those ‘saints of science’—Galileo, Newton, Lagrange, Faraday, Clerk Maxwell, Helmholtz—for whose lives he expresses unbounded praise and thanksgiving. A Serbian immigrant, Pupin landed in the United States with only five cents in his pocket, and these he promptly spent in the purchase of a piece of prune pie. The prune pie proved to be a “bogus prune pie.” But the young immigrant felt no resentment against his adopted country for the loss of his initial capital. He has, indeed, become one of its most redoubtable champions. The trouble about America appears to be that it is equally easy to prove its idealism or its materialism. On that issue, Pupin is on the side of the angels; but, by a happy chance, he has greatly increased the capital wealth of the United States. The money value of his inventions in long-distance telephony alone has been estimated at one hundred million dollars. Some years ago the National Institute of Social Science presented him with a gold medal “almost as big as the full moon”: he appreciated more the proud title of “public benefactor” accorded to him on that occasion. The New Reformation: from Physical to Spiritual Realities. By Michael Pupin. Pp. xvii + 273 + 8 plates. (London and New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, Ltd., 1927.) 8s. 6d. net.