5. Edwin Armstrong
Edwin Howard Armstrong was an American inventor and electrical engineer, who graduated from the Columbia University. He invented an important radio technology, the frequency modulation (FM), which delivers better sound quality than AM and short waves. He also invented superheterodyne receiver, regenerative circuit and super-regenerative circuit. Unfortunately, RCA felt threatened with his invention and Armstrong lost the costly legal battles. Emotionally distraught and almost penniless, on January 1954, he jumped from the 13th floor of his apartment after striking his wife with a fireplace poker. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, put him alongside important figures such as Alexander Graham Bell, Marconi, Nikola Tesla and Michael Pupin.