Oliver Heaviside: The Life, Work, and Times of an Electrical Genius of the Victorian Age

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JHU Press, Nov 13, 2002 - Biography & Autobiography - 318 pages

Acclaimed biography of the pioneer of modern electrical theory featuring a new preface by author.

"He was a man who often was incapable of conducting himself properly in the most elementary social interactions. His only continuing contacts with women were limited to his mother, nieces, and housekeepers. He was a man who knew the power of money and desired it, but refused to work for it, preferring to live off the sweat of his family and long-suffering friends, whom he often insulted even as they paid his bills."—Excerpt from the book

This, then, was Oliver Heaviside, a pioneer of modern electrical theory. Born into a low social class of Victorian England, Heaviside made advances in mathematics by introducing the operational calculus; in physics, where he formulated the modern-day expressions of Maxwell's Laws of electromagnetism; and in electrical engineering, through his duplex equations. With a new preface by the author, this acclaimed biography will appeal to historians of technology and science, as well as to scientists and engineers who wish to learn more about this remarkable man.

 

Contents

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Page xxxi - I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about and express it in numbers you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind...

About the author (2002)

Paul J. Nahin is professor emeritus of electrical and computer engineering at the University of New Hampshire and the author of several books, including Mrs. Perkin's Electric Quilt and Other Intriguing Stories of Mathematical Physics, Chases and Escapes: The Mathematics of Pursuit and Evasion, and Oliver Heaviside: The Life, Work, and Times of an Electrical Genius of the Victorian Age, the last also published by Johns Hopkins.

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