Oliver Heaviside (1850-1925) – Physical Mathematician (1983)

Re:Oliver Heaviside (1850-1925) – Physical Mathematician (1983) by rrss on Friday April 09, 2021 @11:49AM (#26752096)

I will always upvote Heaviside. This man is responsible for most of the foundation of electrical engineering as it exists today (via and refined by others, especially those at Bell Labs who recognized the importance of his work). Unfortunately, in my experience, most electrical engineers only know his name as a reference to the step function.

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Re:Oliver Heaviside (1850-1925) – Physical Mathematician (1983) by zwieback on Friday April 09, 2021 @12:17PM (#26752451)

MEs as well, step function for beam bending. I vaguely remember his name coming up in controls as well where Laplace is popular.

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Re:Oliver Heaviside (1850-1925) – Physical Mathematician (1983) by jhallenworld on Friday April 09, 2021 @12:32PM (#26752625)

Heaviside (partial fraction) expansion I think:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaviside_cover-up_method

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Re:Oliver Heaviside (1850-1925) – Physical Mathematician (1983) by mhh__ on Friday April 09, 2021 @12:21PM (#26752500)

The Heaviside step function probably

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Re:Oliver Heaviside (1850-1925) – Physical Mathematician (1983) by analog31 on Friday April 09, 2021 @12:35PM (#26752664)

I think it's great that the function named after him has a heavy side.

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Re:Oliver Heaviside (1850-1925) – Physical Mathematician (1983) by isitdopamine on Friday April 09, 2021 @05:30PM (#26756448)

I’ll leave this here:

https://me.me/i/barber-what-do-you-want-heaviside-you-heard-...

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Re:Oliver Heaviside (1850-1925) – Physical Mathematician (1983) by zwieback on Friday April 09, 2021 @09:41PM (#26758202)

Genius, want to upvote twice!

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Re:Oliver Heaviside (1850-1925) – Physical Mathematician (1983) by ISO-morphism on Friday April 09, 2021 @01:57PM (#26753753)

> step function

As mentioned in the article he wasn't well accepted by academics of the time. A college math professor of mine remarked that the acceptance of naming the step function after him was intentionally demeaning to the rest of his work.

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Re:Oliver Heaviside (1850-1925) – Physical Mathematician (1983) by hilbert42 on Friday April 09, 2021 @03:25PM (#26754941)

Yeah, right. ;-) But ultimately those who demeaned Heaviside weren't that successful given that most of his electrical nomenclature has actually stood the test of time and is still used today. It's worth quoting Wiki's list (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Heaviside):

"Electromagnetic terms

Heaviside coined the following terms of art in electromagnetic theory:

• admittance (reciprocal of impedance) (December 1887);

• elastance (reciprocal of permittance, reciprocal of capacitance) (1886);

• conductance (real part of admittance, reciprocal of resistance) (September 1885);

• electret for the electric analogue of a permanent magnet, or, in other words, any substance that exhibits a quasi-permanent electric polarization (e.g. ferroelectric);

• impedance (July 1886);

• inductance (February 1886);

• permeability (September 1885);

• permittance (now called capacitance) and permittivity (June 1887);

• reluctance (May 1888)."

Methinks that's more than anyone else has done!

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Re:Oliver Heaviside (1850-1925) – Physical Mathematician (1983) by ISO-morphism on Monday April 19, 2021 @01:36PM (#26865643)

Indeed, and perhaps I should have expanded on the context surrounding that remark. The professor considered Heaviside to be underappreciated and used the story as a lesson on academic and establishment fallibility.

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Re:Oliver Heaviside (1850-1925) – Physical Mathematician (1983) by tigerlily on Friday April 09, 2021 @03:33PM (#26755040)

So what did the college professor think of the Dirac delta function?

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