Forgotten Genius of Oliver Heaviside: A Maverick of Electrical Science

An affectionate biography of a most unusual Victorian eccentric. Oliver Heaviside came from a modest background, had no university training, worked as an electrical engineer for a few years only, then retired to live on a minimal income a reclusive and rather misanthropic life. Yet he, and a few distinguished scientific friends, took James Clerk Maxwell’s revolutionary theory of electromagnetism and turned it into the most important pillar of the new physics of Einstein and Planck. Basil Mahon is already familiar to me as the author of an excellent biography of Maxwell (‘The Man Who Changed Everything’). This book is in his lively, readable style, and can be enjoyed by everyone, with or without scientific training. Having just finished reading it, I am now going to start again, and take notes! The Kindle edition is well produced, with very few typos; it is illustrated, with notes, bibliography, and index.

I ran through reading this book so quick, it surprised me. I liked it very much, but then the subject matter truly intrigued me. I am just amazed that so much of what I learned as a physicist was the result of someone that I had never heard of. I actually used it for some of my research.

This is a good book. Not too many science books leave me crying, but this one did. Well, it's a combo isn't it: science book and biography. It is well written and even though I knew the story and what was happening, the writing was so good at the end that a tear or two welled up, thinking about how this amazing eccentric genius was so shabbily treated in his professional life. I had read Paul Nahin's book (also reviewed here) as well as Hunt's Maxwellians and Mahon's earlier tag-team volume on Faraday and Maxwell. So I was familiar with the details, as I said above. Surely there isn't much more we can hope to know about the subject now as the sources must be all but entirely used. Having said that, I agree with the author's motivation for writing yet another book on Heaviside: to try to help him reach as wide an audience as possible. Good intent, and well executed. The problem with such a subject and aim is that repetition is unavoidable. Mahon mostly stays clear of the mathematics that Nahin embraced, so that may be an attractor for many potential readers. But that apart, the story is much the same, the structure necessarily similar, and even the illustrations much the same. To nitpick on a small point, I was surprised to see the same use Nahin makes of a Pais appendix in his bio of Einstein, about Oliver being nominated for the physics Nobel in 1912. As I pointed out in my Nahin review, in fact between 1904 and 1914 Heaviside was nominated for the prize 7 times. (My source is a simple internet search that resulted in a website called physicsnobel.com/nominations.) It is astonishing to me that given the underwhelming but very practical discoveries that resulted in the prize in some of those years, that breakthroughs of his such as the distortion-free transmission line or the powerful role of inductance in better transmission, were not judged worthy of anointing. Such curious or even combative notions are not taken up by the author. Never mind, a good book as I said, one that enjoyed very much.

This iconic figure in electrical engineering has long remained hidden behind his own dense prose and the technical complexity of his genius. Finally we have a comprehensive biography of Oliver Heaviside suitable even for non-technical readers. Heaviside's many stubborn quirks and idiosyncrasies entertain while the pivotal role he played in the development of electromagnetic theory shines through. This is a must read for students of physics, electrical engineering, and the history of science and technology. Highly recommended.

It's so sad that EE students like me all learn the "Telegrapher's Equations," "Maxwell's Equations," and the "Step Function" when Heaviside deserves his name attached to all of those. I really enjoyed reading about his peculiar life. If only he had let people help him and listened to his friends when they pleaded him to make his papers more readable for the average mortal! His life's soft failures amidst great scientific progress is a haunting reminder that success in this world is achieved through our interactions with other people.

Excellent background, Had heard pieces of the this story in EE class. As an engineer, enjoyed Heaviside's triumph over the mathematicians' parochialism with his invention of Vector Calculus.

I enjoyed the book less the absence of mathematical elaborations of his work. But for most people, those lacking the technical training, this book is an excellent choice to learn more about Heaviside.

Superb treatment of Heaviside's life and his contributions. A perfect blend of personal biography and scientific facts.

Libro molto interessante: fa capire la vera storia della nascita dell' ingegneria elettromagnetica, e racconta la storia di uno scienziato geniale, quale Oliver Heaviside, senza il cui contributo e sforzi oggi non si conoscerebbero le equazioni di Maxwell e le sue applicazioni.

Le titre du livre n'est pas mensonger. On nous parle ici de la vie de ce scientifique quasi-inconnu, et pourtant pionnier des sciences de l'électricité. On doit apparemment beaucoup à cet auto-dictate, qui a su utiliser son expérience pratique de technicien pour ensuite théoriser les lois de l'électricité. Il est à l'origine de nombreuses "inventions" mathématiques que tout étudiant en physique utilise tous les jours sans jamais rencontrer le nom de leur inventeur. Donc, oui, ce n'est que justice de consacrer un livre à cet homme qui a bizarrement été oublié de l'histoire des sciences, et dont le nom n'est associé à aucune équation, même pas celles de Maxwell auxquelles il a lui-même donné la forme vectorielle actuelle. Mais pourtant, ce livre n'est pas passionnant... On le lit avec un certain plaisir, on découvre au passage la vie d'autres scientifiques, ou même l'histoire des sciences électriques en général (finalement il reste peu de pages réellement consacrées à Oliver Heaviside). Mais il faut avouer que ça manque de couleurs et de relief... Comme quoi, pour inscrire son nom dans l'histoire des sciences, il faut certes de grandes découvertes, mais aussi un peu d'épate/de chance pour enrober et vendre le tout : c'est triste, mais Heaviside ou Tesla en sont les preuves.

I suppose that anyone with a physics or engineering background would have encountered the name of Oliver Heaviside somewhere along the way. I certainly did. However, short of a couple of his scientific achievements, I (and probably many others) had no idea who he really was nor what his many other accomplishments were. The author of this book has set out to rectify this situation. In prose that is clear, lively and engaging, he recounts Oliver Heaviside’s life – both personal as well as technical. What emerges is a strange, quirky individual who also was an amazing genius in his field and who has made a great many important, yet often unacknowledged, contributions to electrical science/engineering. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Some of the author’s discussions were fairly technical which I believe is important in order to allow the reader to better understand Heaviside’s groundbreaking work. I found these many technical passages to be quite clear and well explained. Overall, I learned a great deal from this excellent book. I believe that it would likely be best appreciated by physics/electrical engineering enthusiasts mainly due to the many technical aspects that are covered – these aspects being the essence of Heaviside’s life.

I had heard of the Heaviside layer, and that he was reclusive, and little else but much of his other pioneering work is now so much taken for granted that his name is not associated with it. This book does much to remedy this lack of recognition, and should be read by every electrical engineering student of today. For among many things Heaviside practically invented vectors and their notation, using them to simplify Maxwell from his 20 equations to the 4 we now associate - only with Maxwell, of course. Using somewhat unconventional mathematics he made important contributions to electrical field theory (although never accepting the electron) , predicted the skin-effect, invented transmission-line theory. His work alone made long-distance telegraphy and telephony possible, allowing others to patent and make fortunes, he pioneered the rationalised MKS system for electrical units, he corresponded widely was - eventually FRS and was greatly respected by Kelvin, Maxwell and Hertz among others. Yet his whole life was spent in poverty, resolutely rejecting any offers of financial assistance as reminiscent of the Workhouse, and the meagre income from his articles was mostly spent on heating bills. He suffered from the indifference or outright hostility of the so-called `practical men' such as Preece who ran the UK post-office monopoly of telegraphy, and who were therefore `never wrong' as (Sir William ) Preece's obituary blithely stated, apparently sincerely. (I have met people like that!). NIH=Not invented Here. Yet Heaviside never gave up, continuing to write up his work until his death, his only regular visitor the local policeman. Such a disgrace for a country which had made its living from technological advances. But having read the biographies of several other noted inventors I know he is only one of many inventors who had to fight hostility from vested interests and an indifference or contempt of novel ideas. And it won't be the last.

This is a remarkably well written story of the life of a little known character in electrical engineering . Very accessible for any reader , but a full understanding of the technical explanations does require some scientific background .