Oliver heaviside

Oliver heaviside, of Torquay, England, Honorary Member of the Institute, recently died, at the age of seventy-seven, as the result of a fall from a ladder. Mr. Heaviside has been recognized as one of the most eminent exponents of electrical science, particularly for his development of the electromagnetic theory. His retiring character and desire to avoid society, partly due to almost complete deafness since childhood, has resulted in his name being unknown to the general public but those who have come in contact with his work regard him as an illustrious successor to Wheatstone, Maxwell, and Kelvin. He lived alone in a cottage at Lower Warberry, Torquay, England, in poverty, a pension of £200. a year having practically been forced upon him. While, he wrote papers of great value for the Philosophical Magazine of the Royal Society of London and for the London Electrician, for which he received but scant remuneration, these papers were difficult to read and little known. No pictures of him exist and few of his admirers ever met him. His writings however, had considerable practical value, particularly his mathematical theory of the value of distributed self-induction in long distance telephony, a theory of which Dr. Pupin availed himself in this country for practical application to telephony, and establishing a new epoch in this field. The Royal Society elected him to Fellowship, and the Institute on February 14, 1918, to Honorary Membership. The resolution adopted by the Board of Directors at the time of his election to Honorary Membership follows: