Ányos Jedlik

Ányos István Jedlik (1800 to 1895) was a Hungarian inventor, engineer, physicist and Benedictine priest. Born in Szimő in the Kingdom of Hungary, now Zemné in Slovakia, he joined the Benedictine order in 1817, took a doctorate in Pest in 1822 and was ordained in 1825. He taught at Győr and Pozsony before becoming professor of physics and mechanics at the Budapest university in 1840, serving as its rector in 1863. From 1827 he experimented with electromagnetic rotating devices, and in 1828 he demonstrated a device with the stator, rotor and commutator of a practical direct current motor, so Hungarians and Slovaks regard him as an unsung father of the dynamo and electric motor. In 1845 he began lecturing in Hungarian instead of Latin and helped create a Hungarian physics vocabulary.