John W Wagner
John W. Wagner | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Residence | Ann Arbor, MI, United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | Tesla |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Teacher |
John W. Wagner is an American retired elementary school teacher from the Ann Arbor and Dexter, Michigan area who has devoted much of his life to promoting popular recognition of the inventor Nikola Tesla. Reported to be eighty-five years old in 2013, he taught third and fourth grade for many years and became widely known for a decades-long campaign to have commemorative busts of Tesla placed at leading American universities.
Biography
Wagner spent his career as a schoolteacher in Michigan, teaching third and fourth grade, including the instruction of cursive writing, and taught for a time in Dexter before retiring. In 1983, while visiting Allegheny College to collect his daughter during spring break, he discovered the biography Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla by John J. O'Neill in the college library. The book sparked a lasting interest in Tesla, whom Wagner came to regard as an underappreciated figure in the history of science and electricity.
Work
After discovering Tesla's story, Wagner made it a personal mission to increase public awareness of the inventor's contributions. He enlisted his third- and fourth-grade students in the effort, having them assist with research and letter-writing campaigns. Over roughly ten years his classes raised about $114,000 through donations and the sale of Tesla T-shirts, funds used to commission bronze busts of Tesla and place them at universities.
Busts sponsored through Wagner's campaign were installed at some nineteen institutions, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, CalTech, Carnegie Mellon, and the University of Michigan, where a bust was placed in the electrical engineering building on North Campus in 1989. In later years he directed his efforts toward placing materials about Tesla in elementary and middle school libraries.
Wagner also maintained a website devoted to Tesla under the heading "Nikola Tesla—Forgotten American Scientist," which reported more than 500,000 visits. In 2010 he authored two children's books about the inventor, Nikko, Superboy Inventor, aimed at readers ages five to eight, and Nikko and Macak, the Electrical Cat, for older children.