Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937), Italian physicist and inventor of the radio. Marconi patented his radio system in Britain, established the Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company in London in 1897. In 1899 he made the first transmission across the English Channel and, in 1901, the first trans-Atlantic transmission. In 1909 he won the Nobel Prize in Physics. He later developed short-wave radio and established a global radio telegraph network. Photograph published in 'La Telegraphie Sans Fil' (Wireless Telegraphy, 1914), by the French geophysicist Alphonse Berget (1860-1934).