ProofWiki:Mathematicians/Sorted By Nation/Ireland

For more comprehensive information on the lives and works of mathematicians through the ages, see the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, created by John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson.

"The army of those who have made at least one definite contribution to mathematics as we know it soon becomes a mob as we look back over history; 6,000 or 8,000 names press forward for some word from us to preserve them from oblivion, and once the bolder leaders have been recognised it becomes largely a matter of arbitrary, illogical legislation to judge who of the clamouring multitude shall be permitted to survive and who be condemned to be forgotten."

Ireland

William Rowan Hamilton

1805 – 1865

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.

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George Boole

1815 – 1864

Irish mathematician famous for his work in the mathematization of logic, and the invention of what is now called Boolean algebra.
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George Stokes

1819 – 1903

Full name and title: Sir George Gabriel Stokes.

Mathematician and physicist who made important contributions to fluid dynamics, optics and mathematical physics.

Known for the Navier-Stokes Equations and Stokes' theorem. He was not the pioneer of the latter; it was named after him for his habit of setting its proof as an examination question.
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William Hunter McCrea

1904 – 1999

Known to his friends as Bill. Irish mathematician, physicist and astronomer who specialised in solar physics.
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