Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison duke it out over the best way to transmit electricity and Heinrich Hertz is the first person (unbeknownst to him) to broadcast and receive radio waves.

For a man whose career involved the entire known universe, John Kraus had a remarkably insular upbringing. He was born and raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and earned his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in physics, all at the...