Nobel Prize Recipient for Physics. He received world-wide recognition as a German professor for his research and development of the wireless telegraph or radio. "For their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy," he and Guglielmo Marconi shared the 1909 Nobel Prize for Physics. The Nobel Committee recognized his improvement to Marconi's transmitting system. His sparkless antenna circuit, which was patented in 1899, greatly increased the broadcasting range of the transmitter and has been applied to radar, radio, and television. He discovery of crystalline materials that act as rectifiers, allowing current to flow in one direction only, led to the development of the crystal radio receivers. He was also known as the developer of the cathode-ray oscilloscope (Brown or Braun Tube) in 1897 and the fluorescent screen, which was the forerunner of the television tube and radarscope along with becoming an important laboratory research instrument. Born the sixth of seven children, his name was Karl Ferdinand Braun, but he rarely used his first name of Karl. He received his doctorate from the University of Berlin in 1872. Although he had an interest in the wireless from an early age, he had little money to fund his research. His textbook was published in 1876 "The Young Mathematician and Naturalist - Introduction to the Secrets of Numbers and Wonders of Arithmetic," which had a 2000 updated edition. His textbook "Wireless Telegraphy Through Water and Air" was published in 1901, updated in 2002 and placed online. He also wrote numerous articles for the satirical magazine "Fliegende Blatter." After several noted appointments in various universities, he became the director of the Physical Institute and professor of physics at the University of Strasbourg in 1895. In the early months of 1915 he traveled to New York City to testify in a radio-related patent court case in defense of the German-owned wireless station at Sayville, New York, which had been ordered to stop running, against the British-controlled Marconi Corporation. The cased dragged on for months. Upon the United States entering World War I in 1917, he was detained from leaving the country because of his German citizenship. Living in his son's apartment, he could move about the city of Brooklyn, New York, but had no laboratory to work or an independent income, and his health declining. He died "of an accident" before the war ended. His wife, Amélie Buhler Lahr, died five months later. The couple has two sons and two daughters to lived to adulthood. His ashes were taken back to his homeland by his son in 1921, where a small funeral was held. Source of his place of burial was obtained from the website NNDB: Tracking the Entire World: "Cremated, Old Cemetery, Künzelerstr., Fulda, Germany." The Ferdinand Braun Institute in Berlin bears his name as well as numerous streets throughout Germany. In 2002 the asteroid 43790 Ferdinand Brown was named after him.