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Forgotten Genius of Oliver Heaviside: A Maverick of Electrical Science
FINALIST! 2019 IEEE William and Joyce Middleton Electrical Engineering History AwardThis biography of Oliver Heaviside profiles the life of an underappreciated genius and describes his many contributions to electrical science, which proved to be essential to the future of mass communications. Oliver Heaviside (1850 -1925) may not be a household name but he was one of the great pioneers of electrical his work led to huge advances in communications and became the bedrock of the subject of electrical engineering as it is taught and practiced today. His ideas and original accomplishments are now so much a part of everyday electrical science that they are simply taken for granted; almost nobody wonders how they came about and Heaviside's name has been lost from view.This book tells the complete story of this extraordinary though often unappreciated scientist. The author interweaves details of Heaviside's life and personality with clear explanations of his many important contributions to the field of electrical engineering. He describes a man with an irreverent sense of fun who cared nothing for social or mathematical conventions and lived a fiercely independent life. His achievements include creating the mathematical tools that were to prove essential to the proper understanding and use of electricity, finding a way to rid telephone lines of the distortion that had stifled progress, and showing that electrical power doesn't flow in a wire but in the space alongside it. At first his ideas were thought to be weird, even outrageous, and he had to battle long and hard to get them accepted. Yet by the end of his life he was awarded the first Faraday Medal. This engrossing story will restore long-overdue recognition to a scientist whose achievements in many ways were as crucial to our modern age as those of Edison's and Tesla's.
298 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 12, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
June 22, 2017
I was given an uncorrected advance reading copy from Edelweiss to review.
I admit, like many I assume, to being aware of Oliver Heaviside, but knowing almost nothing of his contributions or life. And, as is trending with these biographies I am reading, I find his life fascinating and all the more remarkable that he was entirely self-taught..
Predicting a speed of light limit to be later codified by Einstein, reducing Maxwell's theory to something manageable - and in the process, developing some rather creative mathematics of vectors and operational calculus that were reviled by the mathematicians of the day (who didn't understand them) yet are commonly used today - and understandable, inventing solutions to loss and distortion minimization in transmission lines of telegraph and telephone, his characteristic impedance contributions to circuit theory later becoming indispensable, Heaviside had such an impact on electrical and electromagnetic theories and mathematics and yet...was dwarfed by the big names and the ones who patented what he didn't. Still, despite making enormous and extensive pioneering advances in field theory, understanding so deeply what baffled even William Thomsen (Lord Kelvin), he could not rationalize the electron that was discovered in 1897, arguing that Maxwell's was a field theory had no place for elements of matter.
This is a great story of a man relegated to relative obscurity, and more's the pity. Heaviside's prolific writings were apparently quite pedantic, and he refused to simplify them (yes, his distillation of Maxwell's theory was simplified, but with quite complex mathematics in that simplification), perhaps to his detriment, but the reality is that the proper readership had not yet been born. He had few friends, but those he had were intensely loyal. He argued fiercely with names of the day (largely in magazine letters...he became nearly completely deaf at a young age and shunned the public), more than not on the correct side of science. And because he declined the limelight, and repeatedly refused help, he spent most of his life in near poverty.
Mahon writes a conversational narrative that is well researched (although I found one factual error that I emailed to the publisher) and presented in an easily read format. He says in the end notes that he "tried to tell the story of Heaviside's life simply and directly, putting the reader at his side, seeing the world from his perspective as his life unfolds." I think he succeeded.
I admit, like many I assume, to being aware of Oliver Heaviside, but knowing almost nothing of his contributions or life. And, as is trending with these biographies I am reading, I find his life fascinating and all the more remarkable that he was entirely self-taught..
Predicting a speed of light limit to be later codified by Einstein, reducing Maxwell's theory to something manageable - and in the process, developing some rather creative mathematics of vectors and operational calculus that were reviled by the mathematicians of the day (who didn't understand them) yet are commonly used today - and understandable, inventing solutions to loss and distortion minimization in transmission lines of telegraph and telephone, his characteristic impedance contributions to circuit theory later becoming indispensable, Heaviside had such an impact on electrical and electromagnetic theories and mathematics and yet...was dwarfed by the big names and the ones who patented what he didn't. Still, despite making enormous and extensive pioneering advances in field theory, understanding so deeply what baffled even William Thomsen (Lord Kelvin), he could not rationalize the electron that was discovered in 1897, arguing that Maxwell's was a field theory had no place for elements of matter.
This is a great story of a man relegated to relative obscurity, and more's the pity. Heaviside's prolific writings were apparently quite pedantic, and he refused to simplify them (yes, his distillation of Maxwell's theory was simplified, but with quite complex mathematics in that simplification), perhaps to his detriment, but the reality is that the proper readership had not yet been born. He had few friends, but those he had were intensely loyal. He argued fiercely with names of the day (largely in magazine letters...he became nearly completely deaf at a young age and shunned the public), more than not on the correct side of science. And because he declined the limelight, and repeatedly refused help, he spent most of his life in near poverty.
Mahon writes a conversational narrative that is well researched (although I found one factual error that I emailed to the publisher) and presented in an easily read format. He says in the end notes that he "tried to tell the story of Heaviside's life simply and directly, putting the reader at his side, seeing the world from his perspective as his life unfolds." I think he succeeded.
November 30, 2018
While James Maxwell is recognized as the giant who showed the relationship between electricity and magnetism, Oliver Heaviside was largely responsible for consolidating Maxwell's theories into a manageable set of four equations and making them accessible to both scientists and engineers.
Heaviside started in telegraphy which was based on simple ideas of the flow of electricity without recognition of the effect of capacitance and inductance. Odd effects, such as variations in maximum keying speed and cable faults that actually improved throughput, were not understood and caused Heaviside to start investigations.
Maxwell's work was delayed in adoption as his proposed mechanism for energy transfer was the field, while current scientific thinking was that it was due to action at a distance. However, Heaviside was one of a smaller group that embraced Maxwell's ideas, allowing them to demonstrate new effects such as the creation of radio waves. This group, often called the Maxwellians, were Heinrich Hertz, Oliver Lodge, George Francis FitzGerald and Heaviside.
Heaviside's contribution was to cut through the complex math of Maxwell's work, introducing vector analysis of the fields and thereby making their application to engineering problems more accessible.
Heaviside was the first to introduce the idea that communication lines could be made distortionless by balancing the capacitance with inductive elements. Unfortunately, he presented this important concept as a minor part of his writings, and others reaped the gains of this advance.
Overall, an excellent book on the Victorian development of electromagnetic theory. Mahon has kept the equations to a minimum and included many metaphors to make the concepts easier to understand.
Heaviside started in telegraphy which was based on simple ideas of the flow of electricity without recognition of the effect of capacitance and inductance. Odd effects, such as variations in maximum keying speed and cable faults that actually improved throughput, were not understood and caused Heaviside to start investigations.
Maxwell's work was delayed in adoption as his proposed mechanism for energy transfer was the field, while current scientific thinking was that it was due to action at a distance. However, Heaviside was one of a smaller group that embraced Maxwell's ideas, allowing them to demonstrate new effects such as the creation of radio waves. This group, often called the Maxwellians, were Heinrich Hertz, Oliver Lodge, George Francis FitzGerald and Heaviside.
Heaviside's contribution was to cut through the complex math of Maxwell's work, introducing vector analysis of the fields and thereby making their application to engineering problems more accessible.
Heaviside was the first to introduce the idea that communication lines could be made distortionless by balancing the capacitance with inductive elements. Unfortunately, he presented this important concept as a minor part of his writings, and others reaped the gains of this advance.
Overall, an excellent book on the Victorian development of electromagnetic theory. Mahon has kept the equations to a minimum and included many metaphors to make the concepts easier to understand.
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December 24, 2021frisson
he was self-educated
1902: Predicted the existence of an ionized layer in the upper atmosphere which reflected radio waves; it became known as the Heaviside layer when the prediction was confirmed in the 1920s.
self-willed child who resisted his parents’ exhortations to “try to be like other people.”
never accepting anything just because it came from an established authority
After leaving school at sixteen he spent two years reading everything he could find on scientific topics
used to “scorch” downhill
nominated for a Nobel Prize, and receiving honors such as Fellowship of the Royal Society and an honorary doctorate from the University of Göttingen
He never married and had no children
Two of the eight window spaces at the front of the house had been bricked in to avoid window tax
vexations
teetotaller
they decided to post him to Newcastle, where he would be promoted to chief operator and given a pay rise to £175 per year. This was a fine salary for a twenty-year-old. In January 1870 he left for Newcastle, having made what seemed to be a highly promising start to a career in telegraphy.
Clearly, a lot of time could be saved if the fault could be approximately located before the ship left shore, and this is just what Oliver did. In the cable hut at Newbiggin-by-the-Sea, he connected a battery to the cable and took two current readings, one with the far end of the cable short-circuited and one with it open. The rest was simply a matter of using Ohm's law—voltage equals current times resistance—and carrying out some algebra. He didn't know the resistance of the leaky fault but could use his other information to eliminate it from the calculation, leaving a quadratic equation that was easily solved to give an estimate of the position of the fault. Simple, but ingenious.
There was a touch of beginner's luck here—the method did not always work, because the fault's electrical resistance sometimes varied during the shore-based test—but he was off to a good start.
He was a compulsive observer of nature
the Public Library was his cornucopia
One, by Isaac Todhunter, gave him a good introduction to the calculus.
The other book, on differential equations, was by George Boole.
he was self-educated
1902: Predicted the existence of an ionized layer in the upper atmosphere which reflected radio waves; it became known as the Heaviside layer when the prediction was confirmed in the 1920s.
self-willed child who resisted his parents’ exhortations to “try to be like other people.”
never accepting anything just because it came from an established authority
After leaving school at sixteen he spent two years reading everything he could find on scientific topics
used to “scorch” downhill
nominated for a Nobel Prize, and receiving honors such as Fellowship of the Royal Society and an honorary doctorate from the University of Göttingen
He never married and had no children
Two of the eight window spaces at the front of the house had been bricked in to avoid window tax
vexations
teetotaller
they decided to post him to Newcastle, where he would be promoted to chief operator and given a pay rise to £175 per year. This was a fine salary for a twenty-year-old. In January 1870 he left for Newcastle, having made what seemed to be a highly promising start to a career in telegraphy.
Clearly, a lot of time could be saved if the fault could be approximately located before the ship left shore, and this is just what Oliver did. In the cable hut at Newbiggin-by-the-Sea, he connected a battery to the cable and took two current readings, one with the far end of the cable short-circuited and one with it open. The rest was simply a matter of using Ohm's law—voltage equals current times resistance—and carrying out some algebra. He didn't know the resistance of the leaky fault but could use his other information to eliminate it from the calculation, leaving a quadratic equation that was easily solved to give an estimate of the position of the fault. Simple, but ingenious.
There was a touch of beginner's luck here—the method did not always work, because the fault's electrical resistance sometimes varied during the shore-based test—but he was off to a good start.
He was a compulsive observer of nature
the Public Library was his cornucopia
One, by Isaac Todhunter, gave him a good introduction to the calculus.
The other book, on differential equations, was by George Boole.
October 27, 2020
This gives us an interesting portrait of the character that Oliver Heaviside was. My impressions are that he was, of course, very smart and self-driven, but also that he was paradoxically very anti-establishment but also at times quite concerned about proper behavior for both himself and for others. Honestly, it seems like he could be both very nice and very shafty, depending on the context you knew him in. Being hard of hearing apparently made him socially reticent and self-conscious from a young age.
I wish that the author had explained his discoveries in more detail; I like learning science in the context it was originally discovered in, but this work mostly skims over Heaviside's work and leaves the reader without much understanding of it. Particularly, the idea that electric power runs along the outsides of wires, entering the wires themselves only when lost as heat, needed a lot more background and explanation of how it was proven. The descriptions of the experiments and discoveries of Hertz were great, though! It is quite tragic that so many important minds were cut off before they could fulfill their life-long potential.
I wish that the author had explained his discoveries in more detail; I like learning science in the context it was originally discovered in, but this work mostly skims over Heaviside's work and leaves the reader without much understanding of it. Particularly, the idea that electric power runs along the outsides of wires, entering the wires themselves only when lost as heat, needed a lot more background and explanation of how it was proven. The descriptions of the experiments and discoveries of Hertz were great, though! It is quite tragic that so many important minds were cut off before they could fulfill their life-long potential.
September 19, 2020
Basil Mahon makes an interesting and readable story of Heaviside, his life, tribulations and triumphs. Interesting and exciting times populated by the likes of Maxwell and his famous equations linking electric and magnetic fields. Heaviside was also an interesting character - irascible, stubborn etc and flawed. Heaviside contributed greatly to the telegraph, cable laying under water, making telephone conversations distortion free etc. His only credit seems to be the use of H in the math! Fear not, there is hardly any math in it but there are good references if you want to pursue the math or other biographies of Heaviside or other histories of the era of the coming of the telegraph, the submarine cables, the telephone etc.
June 18, 2025
Non-technical bio of an underappreciated but influential scientist who was the first person to really understand Maxwells equations. Pretty much everything else was messy. A strange character for sure.
February 8, 2018
Interesting book. You don't need a working knowledge of calculus to enjoy this book, but a familiarity with physical science would help.
February 3, 2019
Solid biography of a forgotten genius. Get a real good feel for the man after reading.
June 2, 2020
Fills in a missing niche in the history of physics. I had no idea that my training as a physicist included so much work from Heaviside. At best, he's always a footnote.
December 27, 2021
Excellent
May 12, 2024
Uma boa biografia sobre um dos primeiros "engenheiros elétricos" como conhecemos atualmente.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews