Bruce J. Hunt to Keynote The Heaviside Symposium

The Heaviside Symposium is proud to announce that UT Austin Professor Emeritus Bruce J. Hunt, author of The Maxwellians and Imperial Science: Cable Telegraphy and Electrical Physics in the Victorian British Empire will be a keynote speaker at The Heaviside Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, January 17-18, 2027. His topic will be: “Heaviside and FitzGerald: The Core of the Maxwellian Group.”

Oliver Heaviside and George Francis FitzGerald came from opposite poles of the social and intellectual worlds, yet they became close friends and firm allies as central members of the Maxwellian group that disseminated and promoted Maxwell’s theory of the electromagnetic field in the late 1880s and 1890s. Heaviside came from very modest beginnings in London and was entirely self-taught in mathematics and physics, while FitzGerald was the son of a bishop of the Church of Ireland and one of the shining stars of Trinity College Dublin throughout his career. They were brought together in 1888 by their shared interest in Maxwell’s theory and though they only met in person twice, they kept up a lively correspondence that reveals much about both their respective personalities and the development of electromagnetic theory in their time.

Professor Hunt tells us:

“The paper will be largely biographical and will focus on the extensive correspondence between Heaviside and FitzGerald. Besides bringing out the personalities of both men, I’ll emphasize FitzGerald’s role in winning recognition for Heaviside in the wider scientific community.”

As part of the Heaviside Symposium program, Professor Hunt will be delighted to autograph copies of his books.

Professor Emeritus Bruce J. Hunt is now retired from the University of Texas at Austin where he taught courses in the history of science and technology. He is especially interested in the ways technologies affected the development of physics in the 19th century, a theme he explored in his most recent book, Imperial Science: Cable Telegraphy and Electrical Physics in the Victorian British Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2021). He is currently working on a biography of the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879). Professor Hunt is perhaps best known as the author of The Maxwellians, his acclaimed study of the remarkable physicists, including Oliver Heaviside, George Francis FitzGerald, Oliver Lodge, and Heinrich Hertz, whose brilliant insights transformed Maxwell’s difficult Treatise into the practical and conceptual foundations of modern electromagnetism.

“The Maxwellians is a remarkable achievement.... Hunt combines the highest level of professional historical scholarship with a narrative that is lively and compelling throughout.”
― Nature

James Clerk Maxwell published the Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism in 1873. At his death, six years later, his theory of the electromagnetic field was neither well understood nor widely accepted. By the mid-1890s, however, it was regarded as one of the most fundamental and fruitful of all physical theories. Bruce J. Hunt examines the joint work of a group of young British physicists—G. F. FitzGerald, Oliver Heaviside, and Oliver Lodge—along with a key German contributor, Heinrich Hertz. It was these “Maxwellians” who transformed the fertile but half-finished ideas presented in the Treatise into the concise and powerful system now known as “Maxwell’s theory.” The Maxwellians is available on Amazon.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, British firms and engineers built, laid, and ran a vast global network of submarine telegraph cables. For the first time, cities around the world were put into almost instantaneous contact, with profound effects on commerce, international affairs, and the dissemination of news.

Science, too, was strongly affected, as cable telegraphy exposed electrical researchers to important new phenomena while also providing a new and vastly larger market for their expertise. By examining the deep ties that linked the cable industry to work in electrical physics in the nineteenth century - culminating in James Clerk Maxwell's formulation of his theory of the electromagnetic field - Bruce J. Hunt sheds new light both on the history of the Victorian British Empire and on the relationship between science and technology. Imperial Science: Cable Telegraphy and Electrical Physics in the Victorian British Empire is also available on Amazon.

The Heaviside Symposium will bring together historians, engineers, physicists, mathematicians, and independent scholars over Martin Luther King, Jr. Day weekend (January 17-18, 2027) for two days devoted to exploring Heaviside’s life, work, and enduring influence. Hosted in the “Rocket City,” Huntsville, Alabama at Signals: The Museum of the Information Explosion, participants will meet in an extraordinary venue surrounded by one of the world’s premier collections of historic communications technology, providing an ideal setting for examining the ideas that shaped the modern information age. A Call for Papers is available, and the opportunity to signup and purchase advanced tickets will be available, soon!

Call For Papers: The Heaviside Symposium

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Aug 1

MLK Day Weekend January 17-18, 2027; Hosted by, Signals: The Museum of the Information Explosion in Huntsville, Alabama. Want to present a paper? Email your title and a 150-200 word abstract at the link in this post. The abstract deadline is October 1, 2026. Registration details coming soon.

That’s all for now. Remember always to keep calm, and make physics great again.

More soon,

Hans