There's a fascinating story about ego in science buried here. William Henry Preece was Engineer-In-Chief at the British Post Office in the late 19th Century (b

There's a fascinating story about ego in science buried here. William Henry Preece was Engineer-In-Chief at the British Post Office in the late 19th Century (basically heading their telegraphy efforts) and controversially stuck to Thomson's model, or the "KR Law" as it was called back then, relying on poor quality experimental results to direct the organization. Oliver Heaviside publicly criticized Preece, who in turn blocked publication of Heaviside's writing to preserve his own reputation (according to Wikipedia). When Preece retired in 1899 and received a knighthood, Heaviside wrote in the preface of Volume II of "Electromagnetic Theory": "It is to be hoped and expected that the late important removals in the British Telegraph Department will lead to much improvement in the quality of official science." Writing by hand on his own copy, Heaviside suggested that the preface (and thus the book's publication) were "held back" so as to "allow W H Preece to make sure of his knighthood". https://outsideecho.com/DGT-BIO_files/PDFs/DGT13.pdf https://outsideecho.com/DGT-BIO_files/PDFs/DGT13.pdf So! On the one hand, we have an esteemed engineer who ran the country's telegraphs and refused to admit he made a mistake, became a knight and faded somewhat from history; on the other hand, we have a self-taught physicist who made massive contributions to our understanding and analysis of electromagnetism, lived in "relative poverty" for fifty years while doing so, didn't shy away from calling out bad science, and he gets the analogue of heaven named after him in the musical "CATS".