---
title: "Oliver Heaviside"
chunk: 3/4
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Heaviside"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:06:27.222356+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

In 1896, FitzGerald and John Perry obtained a civil list pension of £120 per year for Heaviside, who was now living in Devon, and persuaded him to accept it, after he had rejected other charitable offers from the Royal Society.
In 1902, Heaviside proposed the existence of what is now known as the Kennelly–Heaviside layer of the ionosphere. Heaviside's proposal included means by which radio signals are transmitted around the Earth's curvature. The existence of the ionosphere was confirmed in 1923. The predictions by Heaviside, combined with Planck's radiation theory, probably discouraged further attempts to detect radio waves from the Sun and other astronomical objects. For whatever reason, there seem to have been no attempts for 30 years, until Jansky's development of radio astronomy in 1932.
Heaviside was an opponent of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. Mathematician Howard Eves has commented that Heaviside "was the only first-rate physicist at the time to impugn Einstein, and his invectives against relativity theory often bordered on the absurd".
In later years his behavior became quite eccentric. According to associate B.A. Behrend, he became a recluse who was so averse to meeting people that he delivered the manuscripts of his Electrician papers to a grocery store, where the editors picked them up.
Though he had been an active cyclist in his youth, his health seriously declined in his sixth decade. During this time Heaviside would sign letters with the initials "W.O.R.M." after his name. Heaviside also reportedly started painting his fingernails pink and had granite blocks moved into his house for furniture. In 1922, he became the first recipient of the Faraday Medal, which was established that year.
On Heaviside's religious views, he was a Unitarian, but not religious. He was even said to have made fun of people who put their faith in a supreme being.
Heaviside died on 3 February 1925 in Torquay at the age of 74, after falling from a ladder. He is buried just behind and to the right of the building near the southeast corner of Paignton cemetery. He is buried with his father, Thomas, and his mother, Rachel. The gravestone was cleaned thanks to an anonymous donor sometime in 2005. He was always held in high regard by most electrical engineers, particularly after his correction to Kelvin's transmission line analysis was vindicated, but most of his wider recognition was gained posthumously.

=== Heaviside Memorial Project ===

In July 2014, academics at Newcastle University, UK and the Newcastle Electromagnetics Interest Group founded the Heaviside Memorial Project in a bid to fully restore the monument through public subscription. The restored memorial was ceremonially unveiled on 30 August 2014 by Alan Heather, a distant relative of Heaviside. The unveiling was attended by the Mayor of Torbay, the Member of Parliament (MP) for Torbay, an ex-curator of the Science Museum (representing the Institution of Engineering and Technology), the Chairman of the Torbay Civic Society, and delegates from Newcastle University.

=== Institution of Engineering and Technology ===
A collection of Heaviside's papers is held at the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) Archive Centre.  The collection consists of notebooks containing mathematical equations and calculations, annotated pamphlets mainly relating to telegraphy, manuscript notes, drafts of papers, correspondence, drafts of articles for ‘Electromagnetic Theory’.
An audio tribute from 1950 to Oliver Heaviside by Oliver E Buckley, President of Bell Telephone Labs, has been digitised and accessible on the IET Archives biography of Oliver Heaviside.
In 1908, Heaviside was made an Honorary Member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE). His entry reads as: “1908 Oliver Heaviside FRS” in the IEE Roll of Honorary Members and Faraday Medallists 1871-1921
In 1922, he became the first recipient of the Faraday Medal, which was established that year. Later on, in 1950 the Institution of Electrical Engineers Council established the Heaviside Premium Award “The Committee have considered the establishment of some form of permanent memorial to Oliver Heaviside and as a result recommend that a Heaviside Premium to the value of £10 be awarded each year for the best mathematical paper accepted.”