The unveiling ceremony was held on Saturday 30th August 2014 at 3pm in Paignton Cemetery. It was attended by the Mayor of Torbay, the MP for Torbay, an ex-curator of the Science Museum (representing the Institution of Engineering and Technology), the Chairman of the Torbay Civic Society, delegates from Newcastle University, representatives from Allwood and Sons the monument restorers and members of the general public. Most importantly, the ceremony was honored by the attendance of a relative of Oliver Heaviside , Alan Heather (Oliver Heaviside’s first cousin three times removed) and his wife.
At this ceremony I emphasized the fact that Heaviside who was an electrical engineer at the start of his professional life, with his work that originated in solving practical engineering problems (e.g. telegraphy and telephony), made an unprecedented impact on fundamental disciplines – mathematics and physics. This fact should be seen by many students and researchers, as well as engineers, as an inspiration to the creative process in science. Unlike the accepted “causal path”, which people often associate with applying basic science to engineering problems, the truly innovative causal path is actually reverse. On this path, one would start with the engineering problem, find a practically working solution – very often engineering intuition helps here – and then “invent” the mathematics and physics to describe the solution as a phenomenon. Heaviside’s whole life has been the following of this path, which pretty well epitomizes his famous saying “We reverse this; the current in the wire is set up by the energy transmitted through the medium around it.” (”Electrical Papers” Vol. 1, page 438, by Oliver Heaviside.). Here the engineering method acts as an driving energy and the product of this method, the scientific method, is like a current in the wire.
I am sure that Heaviside is a brilliant example that we should tell our students about when attracting them into (electrical and electronic) engineering – where they can make impact on fundamental sciences without actually being professional mathematicians or physicists. They need to be creative and imaginative!