Big leaps in insight I don't think are received as elegant, generally. Fourier's contemporaries actually thought he was wrong (which he was), about both the ser

Big leaps in insight I don't think are received as elegant, generally. Fourier's contemporaries actually thought he was wrong (which he was), about both the series and heat equations, and even with the whole thing worked out it's not really straightforward. It fits into integral transforms/linear operators but in a way more complicated than can explained in those terms alone. Plus truncation error is commonly unbounded! Complex numbers and "fluxions" were also objectionable on their face although now one can frame them more or less elegantly.