In November 1905, Maior was employed as an engineer in the Electricity Laboratory of the General Directorate of Posts in Budapest. In 1906 he managed to transmit five calls simultaneously on a single 15-km telephone line, without interference between them. His "Theoretical Foundations of Multiple Telephony" was published in 1907 in the "Elektrotechnische Zeitschrift" and then, in 1914, "The Use of High-Frequency Alternating Currents in Telegraphy, Telephony and for Power Transmission" was published in "The Electrician."
Return to Romania
After World War I and the union of Transylvania with Romania, Maior offered his expertise to the Romanian authorities, becoming director general of Posts, Telegraphs and Telephones of Transylvania and Banat. Almost simultaneously, in July 1919, he was appointed professor at the University of Cluj and then director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics and the Faculty of Technology. During 1929-1946 he served as dean of the faculty. He taught physics courses containing many modern ideas such as "Electricity and Magnetism" and "acoustics and optics," for which he published textbooks in various editions. Maior proved to be a visionary. In 1923 he invited Hermann Oberth to defend his dissertation at the University of Cluj, after it had been rejected by the University of Heidelberg as "too utopian." He put his signature on the diploma of a man who later would be widely recognized as the father of modern interplanetary rocketry.
Distinctions
He was elected a member of the Romanian Academy of Sciences on 21 December 1937. Maior founded the School of Theoretical Physics at the University of Cluj, maintaining permanent contact with the great ideas of that time and making outstanding contributions in the fields under development in Europe. These contributions were fully recognized in 1950, when Nobel laureateLouis de Broglie presented, at the Academy of Paris, a work of Maior called "Gravitational Fields and Magnetism." It was one of the last happy moments of Maior's life, which became increasingly tumultuous after 1947. In recognition of his contribution to the development of education and research in modern physics, the physics council of the Faculty of the University of Cluj decided in March 1995 to name one of its auditoriums "The Augustin Maior Amphitheatre."
Also as an act of gratitude and respect, at the former "No.5 Reghin school," the school at which he began his education, named their gymnasium on 21 March 1994 "Augustin Maior State Gymnasium."