Physicist Mihajlo Pupin—Electricity and Eastern Orthodoxy's Image of Light

This essay examines twentieth-century Serbian-American physicist Mihajlo Idvorsky Pupin’s popular English-language writing on electricity and light in relation to Eastern Orthodox Christianity’s theology of divine energies and light. An immigrant to America, Pupin achieved public fame through inventions such as the Pupin coil and popular writings connecting science and religion. This article contends that Pupin’s popular science writing reflects the uniquely Eastern Christian understanding of a natural order infused with the immanent energies of the transcendent Trinitarian God. Pupin’s thinking was refracted through his experience in the church from his earliest years and his formation in Serbian culture.