The commonly credited discoverer of microwaves for cooking is American engineer Percy Spencer , who noticed in 1945 that a candy bar in his pocket melted while he was working near a radar magnetron and then developed the first microwave oven from that effect.

Quick Scoop

  • Percy Spencer, an engineer at Raytheon, observed that microwave radiation from a magnetron melted a chocolate bar he had in his pocket, sparking the idea of cooking with microwaves.
  • He experimented by popping popcorn and cooking an egg with the magnetron, then helped design the first commercial microwave oven (the Radarange) in the mid‑1940s.
  • Theoretical groundwork for electromagnetic waves, including the microwave region, goes back to James Clerk Maxwell (who predicted them in the 1860s) and Heinrich Hertz (who experimentally confirmed radio waves in the 1880s), but Spencer is the name tied to “who discovered microwaves” in the everyday, kitchen‑appliance sense.

In short: Maxwell and Hertz laid the physics foundation for electromagnetic waves, but Percy Spencer’s accidental magnetron snack mishap made microwaves a household cooking technology.

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