Oliver Heaviside

Oliver Heaviside was a British mathematician and electrical engineer, born in 1850, who invented a new technique for solving differential equations that is equivalent to the Laplace transform and independently developed vector calculus. He rewrote Maxwell's equations in the form commonly used today and significantly shaped how they were understood and applied in the decades after Maxwell's death. In 1893 he extended them to gravitoelectromagnetism, which Gravity Probe B confirmed in 2005. His formulation of the telegrapher's equations became commercially important during his own lifetime. Although he was at odds with the scientific establishment for most of his life, his work altered much of telecommunications, mathematics and science.