Oliver Heaviside: Maverick Mastermind of Electricity (History of Technology Series)

One of the great pioneers of electrical science, Oliver Heaviside (1850-1925) was a self-educated, fiercely independent genius who cared nothing for social or mathematical conventions. Among many achievements, he showed how to rid telephone lines of distortion and put Maxwell s wonderful but hitherto inaccessible theory of electromagnetism into its modern form. In his writings, and in life, he was always provocative, often amusing, sometimes infuriating, but never dull. This is a compelling account of Heaviside s life with a powerful insight into his scientific thinking and why it has been so influential.