please sir I want some more

Oliver Heaviside has been described as a sad misunderstood genius.  He was a self taught mathematician, physicist, inventor and engineer. You can read about his admirable achievements here – they are way too complicated for me to explain adequately anyway.

image found here

Like many brilliant men, he had his unorthodox side too.

His neighbours related stories of Heaviside as a strange and embittered hermit who replaced his furniture with granite blocks which stood about in the bare rooms like the furnishings of some Neolithic giant. Through those fantastic rooms he wandered, growing dirtier and dirtier, and more and more unkempt – with one exception. His nails were always exquisitely manicured, and painted a glistening cherry pink.

Mario nails found here

His diet was also rather unusual

“When I get home at 1:00 pm I put on the potatoes, then eat a first course of a slice of cake and a glass of milk. Read paper. Eat second course of potatoes and butter. Butter essential. Sometimes I have a treat. A cauliflower.”

cosmic cauliflower found here

His long suffering housekeeper, Mary Way, had a lot to put up with too. She was kept a virtual prisoner in her own home and even had to sign a contract stating she would not marry a (?expletive deleted?), would always wear warm underclothing, not go out without his permission and not give anything away without asking him first. He wrote this about her in a letter to a friend:

“The middle aged virgin has had a stroke! Pretty piece of work. But she is getting over it nicely, and I think will be fit for work again.”

Her nieces eventually took poor Mary away and Oliver began cooking for himself again

“Quite independent, and have made whatever I like for dinner. Stone broth, ditchwater soup. Made several discoveries. Parsnips cook easily. Carrots don’t.”

image found here

Other interesting aspects of his behaviour included a love of working in an overheated atmosphere (thermophilia), a great affinity with birds and the strange habit of adding the appendage W.O.R.M. to his signature.

Heaviside was not the only genius who formed a deep attachment to a feathered friend. Nikola Tesla even developed his own special feed

recipe found here

Tesla had been feeding pigeons for years. Among them, there was a very beautiful female white pigeon with light gray tips on its wings that seemed to follow him everywhere. A great deal of rapport developed between them. As Tesla confessed, he loved that pigeon: “Yes, I loved that pigeon, I loved her as a man loves a woman, and she loved me.” If the pigeon became ill, he would nurse her back to health and as long as she needed him and he could have her, nothing else mattered and there was purpose in his life.