Oliver Heaviside

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Oliver Heaviside
Portrait of Oliver Heaviside (1850-1925) by Frances Hodge
Portrait of Oliver Heaviside (1850-1925) by Frances Hodge
Born May 18, 1850
Camden Town, London, England
Died February 3, 1925
Torquay, Devon, England
Residence England
Nationality English
Field Electrical engineer, mathematician and physicist
Institution Great Northern Telegraph Company
Academic advisor Charles Wheatstone
Known for Kennelly-Heaviside Layer
Reactance
Heaviside step function
Differential operators
Vector analysis
Heaviside condition
Notable prizes Faraday Medal
Famous quote: Why should I refuse a good dinner simply because I don't understand the digestive processes involved?

Oliver Heaviside (May 18, 1850 – February 3, 1925) was a self-taught English electrical engineer, mathematician, and physicist who adapted complex numbers to the study of electrical circuits, developed techniques for applying Laplace transforms to the solution of differential equations, reformulated Maxwell's field equations in terms of electric and magnetic forces and energy flux, and independently co-formulated vector analysis. Although at odds with the scientific establishment for most of his life, Heaviside changed the face of mathematics and science for years to come.

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early years

Heaviside was born in London's Camden Town. He was short and red-headed, and suffered from scarlet fever during his youth. The illness had a lasting impact on him, and Heaviside was left partially deaf. Although he was a good scholar (placed fifth out of five hundred students in 1865), he left school at 16 and began learning about Morse code and electromagnetism.

Heaviside became a telegraph operator, initially in Denmark and, later, at the Great Northern Telegraph Company. Heaviside continued to study and, in 1872, while working as a chief operator in Newcastle upon Tyne, he started an analysis of electricity. In 1874, Heaviside left this position and researched in isolation at his parents' house. Here he helped develop transmission line theory (also known as the "telegrapher's equations").

Heaviside showed mathematically that uniformly distributed inductance in a telegraph line would diminish both attenuation and distortion, and that, if the inductance were great enough and the insulation resistance not too high, the circuit would be distortionless while currents of all frequencies would be equally attenuated. Heaviside's equations helped further the implementation of the telegraph.

[edit] Middle years

In 1880, Heaviside researched the skin effect in telegraph transmission lines. Heaviside, after 1880, recast Maxwell's mathematical analysis from its original cumbersome form (they had already been recast as quaternions) to its modern vector terminology, thereby reducing the original twenty equations in twenty unknowns down to the four differential equations in four unknowns we now know as Maxwell's equations. The four re-formulated Maxwell's equations describe the nature of static and moving electric charges and magnetic dipoles, and the relationship between the two, namely electromagnetic induction.

Between 1880 and 1887, Heaviside developed the operational calculus (involving the D notation for the differential operator, which he is credited with creating), a method of solving differential equations by transforming them into ordinary algebraic equations which caused a great deal of controversy when first introduced, owing to the lack of rigour in his derivation of it. He famously said, "Mathematics is an experimental science, and definitions do not come first, but later on." He was replying to criticism over the use of operators that weren't clearly defined. On another occasion he stated somewhat more defensively, "I do not refuse my dinner simply because I do not understand the process of digestion."

In 1887, Heaviside proposed that induction coils (inductors) should be added to the transatlantic telegraph cable (increasing self-induction) in order to correct the distortion which it suffered. For political reasons, this was not done. The importance of Heaviside's work remained undiscovered for some time after publication in The Electrician, and so its rights lay in the public domain. AT&T later employed one of its own scientists, George A. Campbell, and an external investigator Michael Idvorsky Pupin to determine whether Heaviside's work was incomplete or incorrect in any way. Campbell and Pupin extended Heaviside's work, and AT&T filed for patents covering not only their research, but also the technical method of constructing the coils previously invented by Heaviside. AT&T later offered Heaviside money in exchange for his rights; it is possible that the Bell engineers' respect for Heaviside influenced this offer. However, Heaviside refused the offer, declining to accept any money unless the company were to give him full recognition. Heaviside was chronically poor, making his refusal of the offer even more striking. [1]

In two papers of 1888 and 1889, Heaviside 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 Fitzgerald to suggest what now is known as the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction.

Around 1889, after Joseph John Thomson's research into the electron, Heaviside worked on the concept of electromagnetic mass. Heaviside treated this as "real" 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. In 1905 Heaviside was given an honorary doctorate by the University of Göttingen.

[edit] Later years

Heaviside's grave in Paignton cemetery
Heaviside's grave in Paignton cemetery

In 1902, Heaviside proposed the existence of the Kennelly-Heaviside Layer of the ionosphere which bears his name. 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.

In later years his behaviour became quite eccentric, having been at odds with the scientific establishment for most of his life. Though he had been an active cyclist in his youth, his health seriously declined in his sixth decade. During this time Heaviside would sign correspondences with the initials "W.O.R.M." after his name though the letters did not stand for anything. Heaviside also started painting his fingernails pink and had granite blocks moved into his house for furniture. Heaviside died at Torquay in Devon, and is buried in Paignton cemetery. Most of his recognition was gained posthumously.

[edit] Innovations and discoveries

Heaviside advanced the idea of the ionosphere, making the prediction of the Kennelly-Heaviside Layer. Heaviside developed the transmission line theory (also known as the "telegrapher's equations"). Heaviside independently co-discovered the Poynting vector.


Heaviside simplified and made useful for the sciences the original Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism. This innovation from the reformulation of Maxwell's original equations gives the four vector equations known today. Heaviside developed the Heaviside step function, which he used to model the flow of current in an electric circuit. Heaviside developed vectors (and vector calculus). Heaviside formed the operator method for linear differential equations.

[edit] Electromagnetic terms

Oliver Heaviside coined the following terms:

[edit] See also

[edit] Publications

  • Heaviside, Oliver, "Electromagnetic induction and its propagation". The Electrician, 1885, 1886, and 1887.
  • Heaviside, Oliver, "Electrical Papers" 1887.
  • Heaviside, Oliver, "The Electro-magnetic Effects of a Moving charge". Electrician, 1888.
  • Heaviside, Oliver, "On the Electro-magnetic Effects due to the Motion of Electrification through a Dielectric". Phil.Mag.S.5 vol.27, 1889 p.324, 1889.
  • Heaviside, Oliver, "On the Forces, Stresses, and Fluxes of Energy in the Electromagnetic Field". Philosopical Transaction of the Royal Society, London, 1893.
  • Heaviside, Oliver, "A gravitational and electromagnetic analogy". The Electrician, 1893.
  • Heaviside, Oliver, "Electromagnetic theory: The complete & unabridged edition". 1951. ISBN B0000CI0WA
  • Heaviside, Oliver, "Electromagnetic Theory". American Mathematical Society, 1970. ISBN 0-8284-0237-X
  • Heaviside, Oliver, "Electrical Papers". American Mathematical Society, 1999. ISBN 0-8284-0235-3
  • Heaviside, Oliver, "Electrical Papers". American Mathematical Society, 2003. ISBN 0-8218-2840-1

[edit] Further reading

Sorted by date.

  • Lee, G., "Oliver Heaviside". London, 1947.
  • "The Heaviside Centenary Volume". The Institution of Electrical Engineers. London, 1950.
  • Josephs, H, J., "Oliver Heaviside : a biography". London, 1963.
  • Josephs, H, J., "The Heaviside Papers found at Paignton in 1957.". Electromagnetic Theory by Oliver Heaviside. New York, 1971.
  • Moore, D. H., "Heaviside Operational Calculus". New York, 1971. ISBN 0-444-00090-9
  • Buchwald, J. Z., "From Maxwell to microphysics". Chicago, 1985. ISBN 0-226-07882-5
  • Searle, G. F. C., "Oliver Heaviside, the Man". St Albans, 1987. ISBN 0-906340-05-5
  • Nahin, P. J., "Oliver Heaviside, Sage in Solitude". IEEE Press, New York, 1988. ISBN 0-87942-238-6
  • Laithwaite, E. R., "Oliver Heaviside - establishment shaker". Electrical Review, November 12, 1982.
  • Hunt, B. J., "The Maxwellians". Ithaca NY, 1991.ISBN 0-8014-8234-8
  • Lynch, A. C., "The Sources for a Biography of Oliver Heaviside". History of Technology, Vol. 13, ed. G. Hollister-Short, London & New York, 1991.
  • Yavetz, I., "From Obscurity to Enigma: The Work of Oliver Heaviside, 1872-1889". Basel, 1995. ISBN 3-7643-5180-2
  • Pickover, Clifford A., "Strange Brains and Genius, The Secret Lives of Eccentric Scientists and Madmen". June 2, 1999. ISBN 0-688-16894-9
  • Nahin, Paul J., "Oliver Heaviside: The Life, Work, and Times of an Electrical Genius of the Victorian Age". November, 2002. ISBN 0-8018-6909-9

[edit] External links and references

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Norbert Wiener (1993). Invention: The Care and Feeding of Ideas. MIT Press, 70-75. 

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

Persondata
NAME Heaviside, Oliver
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION Electrical engineer, mathematician and physicist
DATE OF BIRTH May 18, 1850
PLACE OF BIRTH Camden Town, London, England
DATE OF DEATH February 3, 1925
PLACE OF DEATH Torquay, Devon, England
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