Oliver Heaviside

L T H O U G H abler pens 1 have expressed appreciation of the late · Oliver Heaviside, it is perhaps permissible for an English telephone engineer to present a note regarding him. Of his life-history not very much is known; but he may have been influenced in his choice of a career by the fact that he was a nephew of the famous telegraph engineer Sir Charles Wheatstone. Heaviside was born in London on May 13, 1850; he entered the service of the GreatNorthern Telegraph Company, operating submarine cables, and he remained in that service, at Newcastle-on-Tyne, until 1874. While he was with the Telegraph Company, he published in 1873 a paper showing the possibility of quadruplex telegraphy. At the age of about 24, owing, it is suggested, to increasing deafness, he left the service of that Company and took up mathematical research work. How he acquired his mathematical training does not seem to be known; 2 perhaps he was self-taught,--in some of his Papers he implies it. By whatever means he mastered the principles, it is evident that he was an ardent student of Maxwell, for constantly in Heaviside's own writing runs a vein of appreciation of Maxwell. For some time he lived in London, then he moved to Paignton in Devonshire; his Electrical Papers are written from there, and he died at the neighboring town of Torquay on February 4, 1925, in his 75th year. T h a t is about all the personal history at present available, and yet it gives a clue to a dominant note in his character, viz., reluctance to come into prominence, originating, perhaps, in a kind of shyness, which ultimately led to the recluse state.