Mathematician:William Rowan Hamilton
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Mathematician
Irish mathematician and physicist famous (among other things) for:
- Creating the field of Hamiltonian mechanics
- The discovery of quaternions
- Development of aspects of graph theory.
Coined the term associative in about $1844$.
Nationality
Irish, although at that time Ireland was politically part of Great Britain.
History
- Born: 4 Aug 1805, Dublin, Ireland
- 1824: Entered Trinity College
- 1827: Invited to apply for vacant Professorship of Astronomy at University of Dublin, and was so appointed
- 1835: Received a knighthood
- Died: 2 Sept 1865, Dublin, Ireland
Theorems and Definitions
- Hamiltonian
- Hamilton Cycle
- Hamiltonian Graph
- Hamiltonian Group
- Hamiltonian Matrix
- Hamiltonian Mechanics
- Hamiltonian Path
- Semi-Hamiltonian Graph
- Hamilton-Jacobi Equation (with Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi)
- Quaternions
Results named for William Rowan Hamilton can be found here.
Definitions of concepts named for William Rowan Hamilton can be found here.
Publications
- 1826: Theory of Systems of Rays
- 1834: On a General Method in Dynamics
- 1835: Algebra as the Science of Pure Time
- 16 October 1843: $i^2 = j^2 = k^2 = i j k = -1$ (in the stone of Brougham Bridge)
- 1844: On Quaternions; or on a new System of Imaginaries in Algebra: 1 (Phil. Mag. Vol. 25: pp. 10 – 13)
- 1844: On Quaternions; or on a new System of Imaginaries in Algebra: 2 (Phil. Mag. Vol. 25: pp. 241 – 246)
- 1845: On Quaternions; or on a new System of Imaginaries in Algebra: 3 (Phil. Mag. Vol. 26: pp. 220 – 224)
- 1846: On Quaternions; or on a new System of Imaginaries in Algebra: 4 (Phil. Mag. Vol. 29: pp. 26 – 31)
- 1846: On Quaternions; or on a new System of Imaginaries in Algebra: 5 (Phil. Mag. Vol. 29: pp. 113 – 122)
- 1846: On Quaternions; or on a new System of Imaginaries in Algebra: 6 (Phil. Mag. Vol. 29: pp. 326 – 328)
- 1847: On Quaternions; or on a new System of Imaginaries in Algebra: 7 (Phil. Mag. Vol. 31: pp. 458 – 461)
- 1847: On Quaternions; or on a new System of Imaginaries in Algebra: 8 (Phil. Mag. Vol. 31: pp. 214 – 219)
- 1847: On Quaternions; or on a new System of Imaginaries in Algebra: 9 (Phil. Mag. Vol. 31: pp. 278 – 283)
- 1847: On Quaternions; or on a new System of Imaginaries in Algebra: 10 (Phil. Mag. Vol. 32: pp. 511 – 519)
- 1848: On Quaternions; or on a new System of Imaginaries in Algebra: 11 (Phil. Mag. Vol. 32: pp. 367 – 374)
- 1848: On Quaternions; or on a new System of Imaginaries in Algebra: 12 (Phil. Mag. Vol. 33: pp. 58 – 60)
- 1849: On Quaternions; or on a new System of Imaginaries in Algebra: 13 (Phil. Mag. Vol. 34: pp. 295 – 297)
- 1849: On Quaternions; or on a new System of Imaginaries in Algebra: 14 (Phil. Mag. Vol. 34: pp. 340 – 343)
- 1849: On Quaternions; or on a new System of Imaginaries in Algebra: 15 (Phil. Mag. Vol. 34: pp. 425 – 439)
- 1849: On Quaternions; or on a new System of Imaginaries in Algebra: 16 (Phil. Mag. Vol. 35: pp. 133 – 137)
- 1849: On Quaternions; or on a new System of Imaginaries in Algebra: 17 (Phil. Mag. Vol. 35: pp. 200 – 204)
- 1850: On Quaternions; or on a new System of Imaginaries in Algebra: 18 (Phil. Mag. Vol. 36: pp. 305 – 306)
- 1853: Lectures on Quaternions
- 1866: Elements of Quaternions (posthumous)
Sources
- John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson: "William Rowan Hamilton": MacTutor History of Mathematics archive
- 1921: C.E. Weatherburn: Elementary Vector Analysis ... (previous) ... (next): Historical Introduction
- 1937: Eric Temple Bell: Men of Mathematics: Chapter $\text{XIX}$
- 1974: Robert Gilmore: Lie Groups, Lie Algebras and Some of their Applications ... (previous) ... (next): Preface
- 1989: Ephraim J. Borowski and Jonathan M. Borwein: Dictionary of Mathematics ... (previous) ... (next): Hamilton, Sir William Rowan (1805-65)
- 1998: David Nelson: The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (2nd ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): Hamilton, Sir William Rowan (1805-65)
- 2008: David Nelson: The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (4th ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): Hamilton, Sir William Rowan (1805-65)
- 2014: Christopher Clapham and James Nicholson: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Mathematics (5th ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): Hamilton, William Rowan (1805-65)