As well as the discovery that falling figs can spontaneously form a delicious cookie...
Cheers!
"In a tragedy for science (if not for society in general) whose outlines we are only now beginning to appreciate, after Maxwell's death, two other 19th Century "mathematical physicists" -- Oliver Heaviside and William Gibbs -- "streamlined" Maxwell's original equations down to four simple (if woefully incomplete!) expressions. Because Heaviside openly felt the quaternions were "an abomination" -- never fully understanding the linkage between the critical scalar and vector components in Maxwell's use of them to describe the potentials of empty space ("apples and oranges," he termed them) -- he eliminated over 200 quaternions from Maxwell's original theory in his attempted "simplification."
Cheers!