Sir William Rowan Hamilton | |
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Born | 4 or 3 August 1805 Dublin, Ireland |
Died | 2 September 1865 Dublin, Ireland | (aged 60)
Nationality | Irish |
Citizenship | British (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland) |
Alma mater | Trinity College Dublin |
Known for | Hamilton's principle Hamiltonian mechanics Hamiltonians Hamilton–Jacobi equation Quaternions Biquaternions Hamiltonian path Icosian calculus Nabla symbol Versor Coining the word 'tensor' Coining the word 'scalar' cis notation Hamiltonian vector field Icosian game Universal algebra Hodograph Hamiltonian group Cayley–Hamilton theorem |
Spouse | Helen Maria Bayly |
Children | William Edwin Hamilton, Archibald Henry Hamilton, Helen Eliza Amelia O'Regan, née Hamilton |
Awards | Royal Medal (1835) Cunningham Medal (1834 and 1848) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Mathematics, astronomy, physics |
Institutions | Trinity College, Dublin |
Academic advisors | John Brinkley |
Sir William Rowan Hamilton MRIA, FRAS (3/4 August 1805 – 2 September 1865)[1][2] was an Irish mathematician, astronomer, and physicist. He was the Andrews Professor of Astronomy at Trinity College Dublin, and Royal Astronomer of Ireland, living at Dunsink Observatory.
Hamilton was Dunsink's third director, having worked there from 1827 to 1865. His career included the study of geometrical optics, Fourier analysis, and quaternions, the last of which made him one of the founders of modern linear algebra.[3] He has made major contributions in optics, classical mechanics, and abstract algebra. His work is fundamental to modern theoretical physics, particularly his reformulation of Newtonian mechanics. Hamiltonian mechanics including its Hamilitonian function are now central both to electromagnetism and quantum mechanics.