Oliver Heaviside (May 18th, 1850 - February 3rd, 1925) was a British physicist self-educated.

Although it had school good performances, it left the school at the sixteen years age and became operator of Télégraphe. However it continued to study and, in 1872, whereas it worked as operator chief with the Newcastle-upon-Tyne, it started to publish its results of a search in electricity.

He formulated again and simplified the Maxwell's equations under their current form used in vector calculus.

Between 1880 and 1887 it developed the operational Calculus, a method to solve differential equations by transforming them into algebraic equations ordinary what was worth to him many criticisms when it introduced it for the first time, because of a lack of rigor in the use of derivation.

In 1887, it suggested that induction coils should be added to the cable of the transatlantic Téléphone in order to correct the distortion from which it suffered. For political reasons, that was not done.

In 1902 it predicts the existence of conducting layers for the radio waves which enable them to follow the curve of the ground; these layers, located in the ionosphere, are called Couches of Kennelly-Heaviside, the name of Arthur Kennelly, American physicist who had the same intuition as him. They were finally detected in 1925 by Edward Appleton.

It also developed the Fonction of Heaviside (also called level or walk), used commonly in the study of systems automatically and it studied the propagation of the electric currents in the drivers.

Years later its behavior became very eccentric.

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Works

• The Heaviside Centenary Volume , London (1950)
• D.H. Moore, Heaviside Operational Calculus , New York (1971)
• G.F.C. Searle, Oliver Heaviside, the Man , St Albans (1987)
• P.J. Nahin, Oliver Heaviside, Wise in Loneliness , New York (1988)
• A.C. Lynch, “The Sources for has off Biography Oliver Heaviside”, History off Technology, vol. 13, ED. G. Hollister-Shorts, London & New York (1991)