8 ms·
Oliver Heaviside (1850-1925) – Physical Mathematician (1983)
- jhallenworld 6y agoAlso: "Coaxial cable was used in the first (1858) and following transatlantic cable installations, but its theory wasn't described until 1880 by English physicist, engineer, and mathematician Oliver Heaviside, who patented the design in that year (British patent No. 1,407)." https://lemmatalogic.com/HeavisideUKPatent1407.pdf https://lemmatalogic.com/HeavisideUKPatent1407.pdf
- rrss 6y agoI will always upvote Heaviside. This man is responsible for most of the foundation of electrical engineering as it exists today (via and refined by others, especially those at Bell Labs who recognized the importance of his work). Unfortunately, in my experience, most electrical engineers only know his name as a reference to the step function.
- zwieback 6y agoMEs as well, step function for beam bending. I vaguely remember his name coming up in controls as well where Laplace is popular.
- mhh__ 6y agoThe Heaviside step function probably
- analog31 6y agoI think it's great that the function named after him has a heavy side.
- isitdopamine 6y agoI’ll leave this here: https://me.me/i/barber-what-do-you-want-heaviside-you-heard-of-my-5425960 https://me.me/i/barber-what-do-you-want-heaviside-you-heard-...
- zwieback 6y agoGenius, want to upvote twice!
- jhallenworld 6y agoHeaviside (partial fraction) expansion I think: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaviside_cover-up_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaviside_cover-up_method
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- afturkrull 6y agoThere's also the "Heaviside Layer" responsible for shortwave radio communication. Heaviside did go a little eccentric in his later years and moved granite furniture into his house.
- ISO-morphism 6y ago> step function As mentioned in the article he wasn't well accepted by academics of the time. A college math professor of mine remarked that the acceptance of naming the step function after him was intentionally demeaning to the rest of his work.
- hilbert42 6y agoYeah, right. ;-) But ultimately those who demeaned Heaviside weren't that successful given that most of his electrical nomenclature has actually stood the test of time and is still used today. It's worth quoting Wiki's list (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Heaviside https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Heaviside): "Electromagnetic terms Heaviside coined the following terms of art in electromagnetic theory: • admittance (reciprocal of impedance) (December 1887); • elastance (reciprocal of permittance, reciprocal of capacitance) (1886); • conductance (real part of admittance, reciprocal of resistance) (September 1885); • electret for the electric analogue of a permanent magnet, or, in other words, any substance that exhibits a quasi-permanent electric polarization (e.g. ferroelectric); • impedance (July 1886); • inductance (February 1886); • permeability (September 1885); • permittance (now called capacitance) and permittivity (June 1887); • reluctance (May 1888)." Methinks that's more than anyone else has done!
- madengr 6y agoInteresting. I’ve been doing RF engineering for 25 years and have never read of permittence and elastance. We usually call it inductive and capacitive susceptance. But yeah, Heaviside did a ton of stuff; I read that aforementioned biography.
- ISO-morphism 6y agoIndeed, and perhaps I should have expanded on the context surrounding that remark. The professor considered Heaviside to be underappreciated and used the story as a lesson on academic and establishment fallibility.
- tigerlily 6y agoSo what did the college professor think of the Dirac delta function?
- CliffStoll 6y agoWonderful note about a most important mathematical physicist. Unmentioned is his stumble in relativity theory: As Paul Nahin wrote, Despite the ‘Einsteinian look’ of Heaviside's speed-dependent terms, his analysis was greatly lacking when compared with Einstein's. Heaviside started with moving charged matter and then applied some heavy mathematics to Maxwell's electrodynamics, while Einstein used nothing but the fundamental ideas of space and time, some simple algebra, and the two relativity principles (all physical laws look the same in all inertial frames, and observers in different inertial frames will measure the same value for the speed of light). Einstein's analysis is free of any special assumptions concerning electricity in particular and the nature of matter in general: to put it bluntly, Einstein saw the whole forest, while Heaviside and Thomson were looking through a magnifying glass at the bark on a single tree. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2017.0448 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2017.044...
- hilbert42 6y agoOliver Heaviside is very often underrated and forgotten and he deserves not to be—even his reformulation of Maxwell's equations into the four that we know and commonly use today alone ought to have him receive better history/recognition in the textbooks. This is probably because he was an outsider to the physics and electrical engineering establishment and he wasn't known to make friends easily, and he didn't abide fools well. Whilst CliffStoll's quote (and link) is from Paul J. Nahin's article in the Royal Society journal it's also worth highlighting the fact that Nahin has written a full bio on Heaviside (it's mentioned in the article's footnotes but might be overlooked). I have a copy of the book, it is excellent, it's likely the most comprehensive and authoritative written on Heaviside, and I'd thoroughly recommend it: Oliver Heaviside–The Life, Work, & Times of an Electrical Genius of the Victorian Age; Paul J. Nahin PJ ©1988-IEEE ©2002-John Hopkins Uni, ISBN 0-8018-6909-9 paperback ed. It's all very well to praise Heaviside but if one really wants to get a feel for the extent and depth of his work then I refer one to the following works of his that are on the Internet Archive (they're out of copyright so they can be downloaded). Note, as with many works, the Internet Archive has multiple copies some of which are more readable (or better scanned) than others, so the seemingly multiple entries are not duplicates. Two other points to note, this list is not comprehensive and the IA's file-naming conventions are sometimes skewed or confusing (apologies if I've made any typos): Electromagnetic Theory, Volume-1, Heaviside, Oliver, 1850-1925, 1893 edition: https://archive.org/details/electromagnetic00heavgoog https://archive.org/details/electromagnetic00heavgoog Electromagnetic Theory, Volume-1, Heaviside, Oliver, 1850-1925, 1894/1912 ed.: https://archive.org/details/electromagnetict01heavrich https://archive.org/details/electromagnetict01heavrich Electromagnetic Theory, Volume-2, Heaviside, Oliver, 1850-1925, 1894/1912 ed.: https://archive.org/details/electromagnetict02heavrich https://archive.org/details/electromagnetict02heavrich Electromagnetic Theory, Volume-3, Heaviside, Oliver, 1850-1925, 1893 ed.: https://archive.org/details/electromagnetict03heavuoft https://archive.org/details/electromagnetict03heavuoft Electrical Papers, Volume-1, Heaviside, Oliver, 1850-1925, 1892 ed.: https://archive.org/details/electricalpapers01heavuoft https://archive.org/details/electricalpapers01heavuoft Electrical Papers, Volume-2, Heaviside, Oliver, 1850-1925, 1894 ed.: https://archive.org/details/electricalpaper01heavgoog https://archive.org/details/electricalpaper01heavgoog Electrical Papers, Volume-2, Heaviside, Oliver, 1850-1925, 1894 ed.: https://archive.org/details/electricalpapers02heavrich https://archive.org/details/electricalpapers02heavrich Electromagnetic Waves, Heaviside, Oliver, 1850-1925, 1889 ed.: https://archive.org/details/electromagnetic01heavgoog https://archive.org/details/electromagnetic01heavgoog
- sprash 6y agoInterestingly the 4 "Maxwell" Equations as we know them today in its algebraic form are actually developed by Heaviside. The original 12 Maxwell equations containing ugly complex calculus expressions are far less elegant and unintuitive.
- UncleSlacky 6y agoIn doing so he left out some interesting physics, though.
- vecter 6y agoCan you explain?
- dboreham 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity ?
- selimthegrim 6y agoCould also be this - https://www.ams.org/notices/201410/rnoti-p1186.pdf https://www.ams.org/notices/201410/rnoti-p1186.pdf
- UncleSlacky 6y agoI'm not an expert, but there is for example a comment in the Wiki about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Maxwell's_equations#The_term_Maxwell's_equations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Maxwell's_equations... "Heaviside's equations, which are taught in textbooks and universities as Maxwell's equations are not exactly the same as the ones due to Maxwell, and, in fact, the latter are more easily forced into the mold of quantum physics" This paper goes into more detail - essentially the Heaviside equations are designed to be easy for electrical engineers to use, through an appropriate choice of gauge (Lorenz), which limits their true scope. Maxwell's magnetic scalar equation has also been ignored: http://electricspacecraft.org/uploads/3/5/4/1/35412744/new_electrodynamics_6.03.pdf http://electricspacecraft.org/uploads/3/5/4/1/35412744/new_e...
- Stratoscope 6y agoAnyone who has seen the musical Cats has heard Heaviside's name. The Jellicle Cats sing of ascending "up up up to the Heaviside Layer." https://catsmusical.fandom.com/wiki/Heaviside_Layer https://catsmusical.fandom.com/wiki/Heaviside_Layer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennelly%E2%80%93Heaviside_layer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennelly%E2%80%93Heaviside_lay...
- devindotcom 6y agoI read lately that the Heaviside layer (Kennelly-Heaviside properly) of the atmosphere, composed of ionized gases, was used for years to bounce radio transmissions off of, allowing them to "skip" multiple times occasionally and travel thousands of miles. It was seasonal and unpredictable on a short term basis so using it seems to have been about equal parts luck, skill, and art. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennelly%E2%80%93Heaviside_layer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennelly%E2%80%93Heaviside_lay...
- afturkrull 6y ago> I read lately that the Heaviside layer .. was seasonal and unpredictable on a short term basis so using it seems to have been about equal parts luck, skill, and art. It was a lot more useful than that. Before the advent of satellites, shortwave radio was used extensively to commuicate with her Majesties far-flung colonies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_World_Service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_World_Service
- Stratoscope 6y agoShortwave radio was great in its day. I used to spend many hours a day listening to international shortwave broadcasts, and talking with other amateur radio operators. One day about 20 years ago I was driving through San Jose and happened to tune in to North Korea radio on the shortwave receiver I had installed in my car, and heard this news gem: "Scientists are studying the brain of Respected Comrade Kim Jong-Il, because the Respected Comrade is capable of feats of mental power beyond the ability of ordinary human beings." Even today, shortwave is making a bit of a comeback thanks to High Frequency Trading: https://hackaday.com/2018/05/12/hft-on-hf-you-cant-beat-it-for-latency/ https://hackaday.com/2018/05/12/hft-on-hf-you-cant-beat-it-f... https://swling.com/blog/2018/05/mystery-traders-using-shortwave-to-cross-oceans-with-less-latency-than-any-fiber/ https://swling.com/blog/2018/05/mystery-traders-using-shortw...
- mhh__ 6y agoHe's buried near where I live, I've been meaning to go on a pilgrimage
- ndsipa_pomu 6y agoDagnammit - sci-hub.se is blocked by VirginMedia in the UK
- mhh__ 6y agoWhat vital work they do
- OnlyOneCannolo 6y agoI love how the Heaviside function looks the way it sounds. ____----
- bjornsing 6y ago”Safari cannot open the page because the server could not be found.” Is this somehow blocked in Sweden? I’m on a Telia FTTH line in Malmö.
- alfla 6y agohmm, could be dns blocking by your ISP. Try changing your DNS server to 8.8.8.8 (Google)
- gwern 6y agoMirror: https://www.gwern.net/docs/science/1983-edge.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/science/1983-edge.pdf
- gwern 6y agoA warning for anyone who wants to quote that Heaviside epigraph: it's mostly fake. https://en.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=Oliver_Heaviside&type=revision&diff=2949443&oldid=2746598 https://en.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=Oliver_Heaviside&...
- nachexnachex 6y agoSuch an interesting character. I can't recommend enough 'Oliver Heaviside: life, works and times of an electrical genius of the Victorian age' by Paul J. Nahin, it's written in such a way that won't make it hard to you if you don't want to dive too deep in the math, but every chapter does include appendices and notes that do go deep, so you get all the details. A treat for EE history lovers.