Google has changed their homepage emblem with an animated Doodle in honor of prolific photo voltaic vitality scientist Mária Telkes, nicknamed “The Solar Queen.”

Mária Telkes was born in Budapest, Hungary on December 12, 1900, and he or she obtained a radical schooling within the sciences, together with a PhD from the College of Budapest in 1924. Later that 12 months, Telkes visited a relative in america and determined to immigrate there quickly after.

Within the early years of Mária Telkes’ profession, she researched biophysics and notably the vitality created by residing issues. Earlier than lengthy, her pursuits shifted towards discovering methods to transform warmth into vitality, and in the end, in 1939, joined the newly fashioned MIT analysis group targeted on photo voltaic vitality.

Amidst World Warfare II, the U.S. authorities’s Workplace of Scientific Analysis and Growth employed Mária Telkes’ for her experience in photo voltaic vitality and modern concepts for the blossoming know-how. One in every of her most well-known innovations was developed throughout this era, a solar-powered distiller which is ready to clear water to be used in medical procedures or make seawater drinkable for troopers misplaced at sea.

Persevering with her work with MIT, Telkes participated in a challenge to make use of photo voltaic vitality to maintain a home heat throughout the bitterly chilly winter in Massachusetts. Her preliminary experiment with photo voltaic powered heating resulted in failure, and it led to Mária Telkes being faraway from MIT’s photo voltaic vitality staff. Nevertheless, she didn’t let this setback finish her profession or cease her from fixing this explicit drawback.

In 1948, at the side of architect Eleanor Raymond and with funding from philanthropist Amelia Peabody, Mária Telkes designed a system that channeled the warmth of daylight right into a particular materials between the partitions, Glauber’s salt, that absorbed the vitality. Because the salt cooled, it might launch the saved vitality as warmth, preserving the home (known as the Dover Solar Home) heat.

After Telkes was let go by MIT in 1953, she continued her photo voltaic vitality analysis at New York College Faculty of Engineering. There, she was given a grant from the Ford Basis to create an oven that works on photo voltaic vitality. The intention was to create one thing that might attain 350°F and be usable by those that don’t have the standard wants of an oven accessible to them.

The ensuing photo voltaic oven was extraordinarily efficient, and was even protected sufficient for kids to study to prepare dinner with it. Telkes even tailored the photo voltaic oven design for use by farmers to dry their crops. Given the oven’s affordability and ease of use in distant places, Telkes’ photo voltaic oven design continues to be in use to today.

All of those improvements (and plenty of extra) in photo voltaic vitality earned Mária Telkes the nickname “The Solar Queen.” As for why Google selected at this time to honor the acclaimed scientist, on December 12, 1952 — 70 years in the past at this time — Mária Telkes was chosen as the primary ever recipient of the Society of Girls Engineers Achievement Award. Moreover, at this time would have been Telkes’ 122nd birthday.

The animated Google Doodle being showcased at this time prominently options a few of Mária Telkes’ innovations just like the photo voltaic distiller, photo voltaic oven, and the Dover Solar Home. The Doodle paintings shifts between the nice and cozy colours of daytime and the cool shades of the night, representing the gathering of photo voltaic vitality throughout the day for use by the chilly nights.

Extra Google Doodles:

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