The Worm Who Rewrote Physics
Maxwell's equations appear on every physics classroom wall — four elegant lines describing light, electricity, and magnetism. Maxwell didn't write them that way. His original was twenty equations, nearly unreadable. A self-taught telegraph operator named Oliver Heaviside compressed them into the form we use today. He also invented operational calculus decades early, predicted the ionosphere, and spent his final years alone in Torquay, furniture replaced with granite blocks, fingernails painted cherry-pink, signing his name as a worm. The equations never changed.
