I N THE world of science Oliver Heaviside was the mathematical genius whose research into electromagnetism transformed international communications. But to his Devon neighbours he was an oddball who lived a hermit-like existence on a diet of tinned milk and biscuits.

Today – more than 80 years after his death – his ideas and innovations are taught at universities all over the world and there are even craters on the Moon and Mars named after him. But not everyone in his adopted hometown fully appreciates the magnitude of the eccentric's achievements, even though there are plaques celebrating his work and local links.

Author and journalist Alan Heather certainly does. From childhood he knew that Heaviside was a famous member of his family, though he never knew him because the mathematician and physicist died in 1925 – three years before he was born.

A first cousin, three generations removed, Alan remembers being told by his father that the pioneer had been "an awkward old cuss but a brilliant man". He later learned that the scientist had played a prominent part in what was then a new world of electricity.

But he knew nothing about Heaviside's local connections until he and his wife Jeanne moved from London to Paignton in 1959 and walked into Torquay Town Hall to pay their rates. Inside, on a wall, was a plaque from the Institute of Electrical Engineers commemorating one of its most famous members, who had spent 35 years living in South Devon.

Now, after carrying out detailed research, he has penned a compelling account about the eminent visionary who became one of Britain's greatest scientists, but whose name is rarely mentioned today.

"He has become a victim of his own success," says Alan. "His ideas and thoughts, which had been thought very strange at first, are now so much a part of everyday electrical science that very few people give any thought to their origin.

"Students, working engineers and physicists use his ideas and methods freely, even though they may not attribute them to him. He leaves an heroic legacy that should not be forgotten."

Born in London's Camden Town in 1850, Heaviside's early years were difficult because a bout of scarlet fever left him almost deaf. In later life he suffered from gout and was plagued by jaundice.

After leaving school he taught himself Morse Code. Then with the help of his uncle, Charles Wheatstone, who was one of the inventors of the telegraph, he got a job as a telegraph operator, working first in Denmark and then in Newcastle.

It proved to be his one and only job for at the age of 24 he resigned and devoted the rest of his life to research and writing technical papers. He developed a new approach to algebraic equations, which allowed a less rigorous thinking to calculus. And his idea of adding induction coils to transatlantic telegraph cables to reduce distortion proved an important milestone.

But he is best known for his prediction that a layer of ionised particles was present in the atmosphere about 60 miles above the Earth's surface, off which radio signals could bounce. It was proved in the 1920s and became known as the Kennelly- Heaviside Layer, in joint recognition with Arthur Kennelly, an expatriate Briton living in America who made a similar prediction.

Heaviside, a Faraday Medal winner, first moved to South Devon in 1889. His brother Charles was a partner in a music business in Torquay and when a second store in Paignton's Palace Avenue opened, he invited his parents and brother to quit their London home and live above the shop.

Heaviside took over the second floor so that he could conduct daily experiments. And he took up cycling on a machine that relied on metal spoons as brakes!

After the death of his parents, he moved in 1897 to Bradley View on the outskirts of Newton Abbot and it was there that stories of his eccentricity first emerged. Convinced that his neighbours were prying into his affairs, which he resented, he retired, like a tortoise, back into his own shell.

Heaviside wrote in a letter to a friend: "They are certainly the rudest lot of impertinent, prying people that I have ever had the misfortune to live near. They talk the language of the sewer and seem to glory in it."

Suffering from what he called his "hot and cold" disease, he turned his gas fires up full in winter to keep it at bay. Visitors to the house found it extremely hot and his heating bills were reckoned to be among the highest in Devon.

Eventually Heaviside was unable to look after himself properly and in 1908 he moved to Homefield in Torquay's Lower Warberry Road, owned by his brother's sister-in-law, Mary Way. She knew about his prickly personality and stubborn ways, but agreed to take the scientist as a paying guest.

After several years, however, Miss Way left and Heaviside found himself living alone. When visitors called, they found his door covered with documents, many of which were summonses for non-payment of rates and demands from what he dubbed "the Gas Barbarians". And trees in his driveway were also festooned with outstanding bills.

Heaviside is buried in the family grave at Paignton Cemetery and every year it is visited by admirers, many from the United States and Russia where he is still revered. But no-one, including the book's author, knows who was responsible for renovating the overgrown plot several years ago and replacing the headstone.

"It is still a mystery," he says.