Oliver Heaviside

“Many books by Heaviside available online at The Internet Archive”

“Mathematics is an experimental science, and definitions do not come first, but later on.”

“... the present time is the age of communication ... communication engineering began with Gauss, Wheatstone, and the first telegraphers. It received its first reasonably scientific treatment at the hands of Lord Kelvin, after the failure of the first transatlantic cable in the middle of the last century, and from the eighties on, it was perhaps Heaviside who did the most to bring into a modern shape.”

“General circuit theory, the theory of transmission lines and wave propagation, vector analysis, even the four famous Maxwell's equations—all had flowed from the pen of this amazing man.”

“Mathematics is of two kinds, Rigorous and Physical. The former is Narrow: the latter Bold and Broad. To have to stop to formulate rigorous demonstrations would put a stop to most physico-mathematical inquiries. Am I to refuse to eat because I do not fully understand the mechanism of digestion?”

“Electric and magnetic forces. May they live for ever, and never be forgot, if only to remind us that the science of electromagnetics, in spite of the abstract nature of its theory, involving quantities whose nature is entirely unknown at the present, is really and truly founded on the observations of real Newtonian forces, electric and magnetic respectively.”

“We do not dwell in the Palace of Truth. But, as was mentioned to me not long since, "There is a time coming when all things shall be found out." I am not so sanguine myself, believing that the well in which Truth is said to reside is really a bottomless pit.”

“However absurd it may seem, I do in all seriousness hereby declare that I am animated mainly by philanthropic motives. I desire to do good to my fellow creatures, even to the Cui bonos.”