Oliver Heaviside was a genius who provided the theory for long-distance telephones and predicted the existence of the ionosphere.
He was born in the London slums and left partially deaf from scarlet fever. In what little schooling he had, he excelled and this drove his passion for discovery and invention.
Heaviside worked as a telegraphist but in a flash of inspiration quit work, locked himself in a room and reduced Maxwell's entire 'theory of electricity and magnetism' into two equations. These formed the basis for all electric theory, and are often (wrongly) credited to Heinrich Hertz.
He suggested that there was a reflective layer in the atmosphere which 'bounced' radio waves back down to Earth, which was later named the 'Heaviside Layer'. He also created the advance mathematical theory of 'operation calculus', but this proved too advanced for his contemporaries, who ridiculed and attacked him, forcing him to retire hurt, bitter and paranoid. He was, however, proved right in the end.
