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the Losev problem

Blog · Friendship & Community · 2022 · 147 words

Oleg Losev invented the LED in the 1920s but died unknown and broke. We should build an informal global nerd network so lonely geniuses like him can find each other and advance humanity faster.

the Losev problem

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Oleg Vladimirovich Losev invented LEDs decades before everybody else (in the 1920s). “Unknown and uncelebrated, this should’ve been the beginning of the photonic telecommunications revolution.”

But nobody cared. He was a lonely, broke self-taught nerd with no co-authors. He wrote to Einstein but didn’t get a reply. He died of starvation at the siege of Leningrad in 1942, at a sadly young 38 years of age. 

Let’s create an accessible, informal, global nerd network that makes it easy for nerds like Losev to reach out to someone and get rerouted to wherever they need to go. If there’s a 1% shot of finding someone who advances some domain by 20 years, that’s a gift to humanity, and that’s worth doing.

More about Losev:

See also:

  • Ramanujan
  • Vavilov
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Originally published at https://www.visakanv.com/blog/losev/.