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Oliver Heaviside: Maverick Mastermind of Electricity
Author(s): Basil Mahon (Author)
- Publisher: The Institution of Engineering and Technology
- Publication Date: April 24, 2009
- Edition: 1st
- Language: English
- Print length: 224 pages
- ISBN-10: 0863419658
- ISBN-13: 9780863419652
Book Description
Oliver Heaviside (1850-1925) was one of the great pioneers of electrical science. His ideas led to huge advances in communications and now form much of the bedrock of electrical engineering – every textbook and every college course bears his stamp.
Despite having little formal education he created the mathematical tools that were to prove essential to the proper understanding and use of electricity. At first his ideas were thought to be outrageous and he had to battle long and hard against ignorance, prejudice and vested interests to get them accepted. Yet they are now so much a part of everyday electrical science that they are simply taken for granted and our great debt to him is rarely acknowledged.
Caring nothing for social or mathematical conventions, he lived a fiercely independent life, much of the time close to poverty. His writings reveal a personality like no other and are laced with wickedly irreverent humour; he is by far the funniest author of scientific papers.
Basil Mahon combines a compelling account of Heaviside’s life with a powerful insight into his scientific thinking and the reasons for its enduring influence.
Editorial Reviews
Review
‘an engaging account of this heady, confusing period when electromagnetism was a young science and Heaviside was one of its greatest – and most eccentric – exponents. For Heaviside’s relative obscurity was at least partly his own fault. Although he could be witty and even charming to his friends, he was also a thoroughly awkward individual who bore grudges like a champion, speckled his scientific articles with thinly veiled attacks on his enemies and repeatedly rejected pleas to make his papers more understandable.
Mahon is clearly sympathetic to his subject, but he does not shrink from the more challenging aspects of either Heaviside’s character or his science. This slim volume is an excellent introduction to both.’
― Physics World
About the Author
A former officer in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, Basil Mahon is a retired Government Statistician who ran the 1991 census in England and Wales and has had a lifelong passion for the physical sciences. Oliver Heaviside follows up his acclaimed book The Man Who Changed Everything, a biography of Heaviside’s own hero James Clerk Maxwell.
