New Delhi: More than a century ago, long before the need to substitute fossil fuels had risen, a woman from Hungary, Maria Telkes, had predicted the boundless possibilities of solar energy, which would later earn her the title “Sun Queen”.
Today, Telkes is best remembered for her invention of the solar distiller and the first solar-powered heating system designed for homes.
Born in Hungary’s Budapest on 12 December 1900, she attended the Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest to study physical chemistry. She graduated with a B.A. in 1920 and went on to earn her PhD in 1924.
On Monday, Google through its doodle marked the 122nd birth anniversary of the Hungarian-American scientist and biophysicist.
Telkes, the eldest of the eight children of Aladar and Mária Laban of Telkes, fell in love with the power of the Sun as a teenager. She strongly believed in the potential of solar energy to substitute fossil fuels. Throughout her career, she remained involved with developing groundbreaking solar inventions.
In 1924, Telkes emigrated to the US. She was initially employed by the Cleveland Clinic Foundation to study the energy generated by living things. Later, in 1939, she was hired by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), to join its nascent Solar Energy Conversion Project. At the time, She was one of very few women in engineering.
Telkes became an American citizen in 1937.
A long list of inventions
Her first invention was in Cleveland where she developed a photoelectric device that recorded brain waves.
During World War II, the United States government, noting Telkes’s expertise, recruited her to serve as a civilian advisor to the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD).
There, she developed a solar-powered water desalination machine, completing a prototype in 1942. The device made it easier for soldiers to access clean water in challenging circumstances and assisted in resolving the water crisis in the US Virgin Islands, making it one of her most famous inventions.
Telkes’ solar energy system was vastly different from the solar panels of today. But her solar heating systems — which included patents for a radiant energy heat transfer device (1946), a heat storage unit (1951) and an apparatus to store and release heat (1952) — remained the most affordable options for solar energy supply in the following decades.
In 1946, Telkes was reassigned to the metallurgy department, where she continued her work on thermocouples. She was no longer involved in the MIT solar fund due to differences of opinions. Later, Godfrey Lowell Cabot offered her to return. He encouraged her to continue working on the project independently.
She collaborated with architect Eleanor Raymond in the 1940s to construct the Dover Sun House. It was the world’s first modern house heated with solar energy, which was built in 1948. The phrase “solar energy” became more widely known as a result of the project’s success.
As of 1953, Telkes moved to the New York University College of Engineering where she continued to work on solar energy research. Telkes received a grant from the Ford Foundation of $45,000 to develop a solar-powered oven so people who lack the technology around the world are able to heat things.
At the University of Delaware’s Institute of Energy Conversion, Telkes started learning about solar cells, which produce power. She participated in the construction of the first home that used solar energy for both heating and lighting in 1971.
In 1981, she helped the US Department of Energy to develop and build the first fully solar-powered home, Carlisle House in Carlisle, Massachusetts.
Telkes received multiple awards for her works, including the Inaugural Society of Women Engineers Achievement Award in 1952 & Charles Greeley Abbot Award, American Solar Energy Society in 1977.
After spending seven decades in the US, Telkes returned to her native Hungary for the first time in 1995. It was during this visit that she passed away, ten days shy of her 95th birthday.
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