William Rowan Hamilton

Sir William Rowan Hamilton
Sir William Rowan Hamilton (1805–1865)
Born4 or 3 August 1805
Dublin, Ireland
Died2 September 1865(1865-09-02) (aged 60)
Dublin, Ireland
NationalityIrish
CitizenshipBritish (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland)
Alma materTrinity College Dublin
Known forHamilton'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
SpouseHelen Maria Bayly
ChildrenWilliam Edwin Hamilton, Archibald Henry Hamilton, Helen Eliza Amelia O'Regan, née Hamilton
AwardsRoyal Medal (1835)
Cunningham Medal (1834 and 1848)
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics, astronomy, physics
InstitutionsTrinity College, Dublin
Academic advisorsJohn 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.

  1. ^ Hamilton was born at midnight. In his younger years, his birthday was celebrated on 3 August, but after the birth of his second son on 4 August 1835 he changed it to 4 August.
  2. ^ Graves (1882) Vol. I, p. 1
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference ODNB was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

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