Oliver Heaviside

Oliver Heaviside
Heaviside c. 1900
Born	(1850-05-18)18 May 1850 Camden Town, Middlesex, England
Died	3 February 1925(1925-02-03) (aged 74) Mount Stuart Nursing Home Torquay, Devon
Resting place	Paignton cemetery, Devon
Nationality	British
Known for	Heaviside cover-up method Heaviside step function Heaviside condition Heaviside-Feynman formula Heaviside ellipsoid Kennelly–Heaviside layer Energy current Vector analysis Operational analysis Differential operators Coaxial cable Telegrapher's equations Electromagnetic four-potential Gravitoelectromagnetism
Awards	Faraday Medal (1922) Fellow of the Royal Society[1]
Scientific career
Fields	Electrical engineering, mathematics and physics
Institutions	Great Northern Telegraph Company

Oliver Heaviside FRS^[1] (/ˈhɛvisaɪd/; 18 May 1850 – 3 February 1925) was an English self-taught mathematician and physicist who invented a new technique for solving differential equations (equivalent to the Laplace transform), independently developed vector calculus, and rewrote Maxwell's equations in the form commonly used today. He significantly shaped the way Maxwell's equations are understood and applied in the decades following Maxwell's death. His formulation of the telegrapher's equations became commercially important during his own lifetime, after their significance went unremarked for a long while, as few others were versed at the time in his novel methodology.^[2] Although at odds with the scientific establishment for most of his life, Heaviside changed the face of telecommunications, mathematics, and science.^[2]

Biography

Early life

Heaviside was born in Camden Town, London, at 55 Kings Street^[3]: 13 (now Plender Street), the youngest of three children of Thomas, a draughtsman and wood engraver, and Rachel Elizabeth (née West). He was a short and red-headed child, and suffered from scarlet fever when young, which left him with a hearing impairment. A small legacy enabled the family to move to a better part of Camden when he was thirteen and he was sent to Camden House Grammar School. He was a good student, placing fifth out of five hundred students in 1865, but his parents could not keep him at school after he was 16, so he continued studying for a year by himself and had no further formal education.^[4]: 51

Heaviside's uncle by marriage was Sir

I remember my first look at the great treatise of Maxwell's when I was a young man... I saw that it was great, greater and greatest, with prodigious possibilities in its power... I was determined to master the book and set to work. I was very ignorant. I had no knowledge of mathematical analysis (having learned only school algebra and trigonometry which I had largely forgotten) and thus my work was laid out for me. It took me several years before I could understand as much as I possibly could. Then I set Maxwell aside and followed my own course. And I progressed much more quickly... It will be understood that I preach the gospel according to my interpretation of Maxwell.[8]

Undertaking research from home, he helped develop

From 1882 to 1902, except for three years, he contributed regular articles to the trade paper The Electrician, which wished to improve its standing, for which he was paid £40 per year. This was hardly enough to live on, but his demands were very small and he was doing what he most wanted to. Between 1883 and 1887 these averaged 2–3 articles per month and these articles later formed the bulk of his Electromagnetic Theory and Electrical Papers.^[4]: 71

In 1880, Heaviside researched the

Between 1880 and 1887, Heaviside developed the operational calculus using ${\displaystyle p}$ for the differential operator, (which Boole had previously denoted by ${\displaystyle D}$^[10]), giving a method of solving differential equations by direct solution as algebraic equations. This later caused a great deal of controversy, owing to its lack of rigour. He famously said, "Mathematics is an experimental science, and definitions do not come first, but later on. They make themselves, when the nature of the subject has developed itself."^[11] On another occasion he asked, "Shall I refuse my dinner because I do not fully understand the process of digestion?"^[12]

In 1887, Heaviside worked with his brother Arthur on a paper entitled "The Bridge System of Telephony". However the paper was blocked by Arthur's superior, William Henry Preece of the Post Office, because part of the proposal was that loading coils (inductors) should be added to telephone and telegraph lines to increase their self-induction and correct the distortion which they suffered. Preece had recently declared self-inductance to be the great enemy of clear transmission. Heaviside was also convinced that Preece was behind the sacking of the editor of The Electrician which brought his long-running series of articles to a halt (until 1891).^[13] There was a long history of animosity between Preece and Heaviside. Heaviside considered Preece to be mathematically incompetent, an assessment supported by the biographer Paul J. Nahin: "Preece was a powerful government official, enormously ambitious, and in some remarkable ways, an utter blockhead." Preece's motivations in suppressing Heaviside's work were more to do with protecting Preece's own reputation and avoiding having to admit error than any perceived faults in Heaviside's work.^{[3]: xi–xvii, 162–183}

The importance of Heaviside's work remained undiscovered for some time after publication in The Electrician. In 1897,

But this setback had the effect of turning Heaviside's attention towards electromagnetic radiation,[17] and in two papers of 1888 and 1889, he calculated the deformations of electric and magnetic fields surrounding a moving charge, as well as the effects of it entering a denser medium. This included a prediction of what is now known as Cherenkov radiation, and inspired his friend George FitzGerald to suggest what now is known as the Lorentz–FitzGerald contraction.

In 1889, Heaviside first published a correct derivation of the magnetic force on a moving charged particle,^[18] which is the magnetic component of what is now called the Lorentz force.

In the late 1880s and early 1890s, Heaviside worked on the concept of electromagnetic mass. Heaviside treated this as material mass, capable of producing the same effects. Wilhelm Wien later verified Heaviside's expression (for low velocities).

In 1891 the British Royal Society recognized Heaviside's contributions to the mathematical description of electromagnetic phenomena by naming him a Fellow of the Royal Society, and the following year devoting more than fifty pages of the Philosophical Transactions of the Society to his vector methods and electromagnetic theory. In 1905 Heaviside was given an honorary doctorate by the University of Göttingen.

Later years and views

In 1896, FitzGerald and John Perry obtained a civil list pension of £120 per year for Heaviside, who was now living in Devon, and persuaded him to accept it, after he had rejected other charitable offers from the Royal Society.^[17]

In 1902, Heaviside proposed the existence of what is now known as the Kennelly–Heaviside layer of the ionosphere. Heaviside's proposal included means by which radio signals are transmitted around the Earth's curvature. The existence of the ionosphere was confirmed in 1923. The predictions by Heaviside, combined with Planck's radiation theory, probably discouraged further attempts to detect radio waves from the Sun and other astronomical objects. For whatever reason, there seem to have been no attempts for 30 years, until Jansky's development of radio astronomy in 1932.

Heaviside was an opponent of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.^[19] Mathematician Howard Eves has commented that Heaviside "was the only first-rate physicist at the time to impugn Einstein, and his invectives against relativity theory often bordered on the absurd".^[19]

In later years his behavior became quite eccentric. According to associate B.A. Behrend, he became a recluse who was so averse to meeting people that he delivered the manuscripts of his Electrician papers to a grocery store, where the editors picked them up.^[20] Though he had been an active cyclist in his youth, his health seriously declined in his sixth decade. During this time Heaviside would sign letters with the initials "W.O.R.M." after his name. Heaviside also reportedly started painting his fingernails pink and had granite blocks moved into his house for furniture.

On Heaviside's religious views, he was a Unitarian, but not religious. He was even said to have made fun of people who put their faith in a supreme being.^[21]

Heaviside died on 3 February 1925, at

Heaviside Memorial Project

In July 2014, academics at Newcastle University, UK and the Newcastle Electromagnetics Interest Group founded the Heaviside Memorial Project^[24] in a bid to fully restore the monument through public subscription.^[25][26] The restored memorial was ceremonially unveiled on 30 August 2014 by Alan Heather, a distant relative of Heaviside. The unveiling was attended by the Mayor of Torbay, the Member of Parliament (MP) for Torbay, an ex-curator of the Science Museum (representing the Institution of Engineering and Technology), the Chairman of the Torbay Civic Society, and delegates from Newcastle University.^[27]

The Institution of Engineering and Technology

A collection of Heaviside's papers is held at the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) Archive Centre.^[28] The collection consists of notebooks containing mathematical equations and calculations, annotated pamphlets mainly relating to telegraphy, manuscript notes, drafts of papers, correspondence, drafts of articles for ‘Electromagnetic Theory’. An audio tribute from 1950 to Oliver Heaviside by Oliver E Buckley, President of Bell Telephone Labs, has been digitised and accessible on the IET Archives biography of Oliver Heaviside.^[29]

In 1908 Oliver Heaviside was made an Honorary Member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE). His entry reads as: “1908 Oliver Heaviside FRS” in the IEE Roll of Honorary Members and Faraday Medallists 1871-1921 ^[30][31] In 1922, he became the first recipient of the

Innovations and discoveries

Articles about
Electromagnetism
Electricity Magnetism Optics History Computational Textbooks Phenomena
Electrostatics Charge density Conductor Coulomb law Electret Electric charge Electric dipole Electric field Electric flux Electric potential Electrostatic discharge Electrostatic induction Gauss law Insulator Permittivity Polarization Potential energy Static electricity Triboelectricity
Magnetostatics Ampère law Biot–Savart law Gauss magnetic law Magnetic dipole Magnetic field Magnetic flux Magnetic scalar potential Magnetic vector potential Magnetization Permeability Right-hand rule
Electrodynamics Bremsstrahlung Cyclotron radiation Displacement current Eddy current Electromagnetic field Electromagnetic induction Electromagnetic pulse Electromagnetic radiation Faraday law Jefimenko equations Larmor formula Lenz law Liénard–Wiechert potential London equations Lorentz force Maxwell equations Maxwell tensor Poynting vector Synchrotron radiation
Electrical network Alternating current Capacitance Current density Direct current Electric current Electrolysis Electromotive force Impedance Inductance Joule heating Kirchhoff laws Network analysis Ohm law Parallel circuit Resistance Resonant cavities Series circuit Voltage Waveguides
Magnetic circuit AC motor DC motor Electric machine Electric motor Gyrator–capacitor Induction motor Linear motor Magnetomotive force Permeance Reluctance (complex) Reluctance (real) Rotor Stator Transformer
Covariant formulation Electromagnetic tensor Electromagnetism and special relativity Four-current Four-potential Mathematical descriptions Maxwell equations in curved spacetime Relativistic electromagnetism Stress–energy tensor
Scientists Ampère Biot Coulomb Davy Einstein Faraday Fizeau Gauss Heaviside Helmholtz Henry Hertz Hopkinson Jefimenko Joule Kelvin Kirchhoff Larmor Lenz Liénard Lorentz Maxwell Neumann Ohm Ørsted Poisson Poynting Ritchie Savart Singer Steinmetz Tesla Volta Weber Wiechert
v t e

Heaviside did much to develop and advocate

operators of the vector calculus to reformulate 12 of these 20 equations into four equations in four variables (${\displaystyle {\textbf {B}},{\textbf {E}},{\textbf {J}}~{\text{and}}~\rho }$), the form by which they have been known ever since (see

Heaviside advanced the idea that the Earth's uppermost atmosphere contained an ionized layer known as the ionosphere; in this regard, he predicted the existence of what later was dubbed the Kennelly–Heaviside layer. In 1947 Edward Victor Appleton received the Nobel Prize in Physics for proving that this layer really existed.

Electromagnetic terms

Heaviside

• admittance (reciprocal of impedance) (December 1887);
• elastance (reciprocal of permittance, reciprocal of capacitance) (1886);
• conductance
  (real part of admittance, reciprocal of resistance) (September 1885);
• ferroelectric
  );
• impedance (July 1886);
• inductance (February 1886);
• permeability (September 1885);
• permittance (now called capacitance) and permittivity
  (June 1887);
• reluctance (May 1888);^[42]

Heaviside is sometimes incorrectly credited with coining susceptance (the imaginary part of admittance) and reactance (the imaginary part of impedance). The former was coined by Charles Proteus Steinmetz (1894).^[43] The latter was coined by M. Hospitalier (1893).^[44]

Publications

Wikisource has original works by or about:
Oliver Heaviside

Wikiquote has quotations related to Oliver Heaviside.

• 1885, 1886, and 1887, "Electromagnetic induction and its propagation", The Electrician.
• 1888/89, "Electromagnetic waves, the propagation of potential, and the electromagnetic effects of a moving charge", The Electrician.
• 1889, "On the Electromagnetic Effects due to the Motion of Electrification through a Dielectric", Phil.Mag.S.5 27: 324.
• 1892 "On the Forces, Stresses, and Fluxes of Energy in the Electromagnetic Field" Phil.Trans.Royal Soc. A 183:423–80.
• 1892 "On Operators in Physical Mathematics" Part I. Proc. Roy. Soc. 1892 Jan 1. vol.52 pp. 504–529
• 1892 Heaviside, Oliver (1892). Electrical Papers. Vol. 1. Macmillan Co, London and New York.
  ISBN 9780828402354
  .
• 1893 "On Operators in Physical Mathematics" Part II Proc. Roy. Soc. 1893 Jan 1. vol.54 pp. 105–143
• 1893 "A gravitational and electromagnetic analogy," The Electrician, vol.31, pp. 281–282 (part I), p. 359 (part II)
  • 1893 reproduced in, Electromagnetic Theory vol I, Chapter 4 Appendix B pp. 455-466
• 1893 Heaviside, Oliver (1893). Electromagnetic Theory. Vol. 1. The Electrician Printing and Publishing Co, London.
  ISBN 978-0-8284-0235-4.^[45]
• 1894 Heaviside, Oliver (1894). Electrical Papers. Vol. 2. Macmillan Co, London and New York.
• 1899 Heaviside, Oliver (1899). Electromagnetic Theory. Vol. 2. The Electrician Printing and Publishing Co, London.
• 1912 Heaviside, Oliver (1912). Electromagnetic Theory. Vol. 3. The Electrician Printing and Publishing Co, London.
• 1925. Electrical Papers. 2 vols Boston 1925 (Copley)
• 1950 Electromagnetic theory: The complete & unabridged edition. (Spon) reprinted 1950 (Dover)
• 1970 Heaviside, Oliver (1970). Electrical Papers. Chelsea Publishing Company, Incorporated.
  ISBN 978-0-8284-0235-4
  .
• 1971 "Electromagnetic theory; Including an account of Heaviside's unpublished notes for a fourth volume" Chelsea,
  ISBN 0-8284-0237-X
• 2001 Heaviside, Oliver (1 December 2001). Electrical Papers. American Mathematical Society.
  ISBN 978-0-8218-2840-3
  .

• 1850 in science
• Electric displacement field
• Biot–Savart law
• Bridge circuit § Heaviside bridge
• Heaviside–Lorentz units

References