ProofWiki:Mathematicians/William Rowan Hamilton

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
• Died: 2 Sept 1865, Dublin, Ireland

Theorems and Definitions

• Hamiltonian Mechanics
• Hamiltonian Graph
• Hamiltonian Path
• Hamilton Cycle
• Hamiltonian Group
• Hamiltonian Matrix
• Quaternions
• Hamilton's Equations

• Cayley-Hamilton Theorem (with Arthur Cayley)

Books and Other 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)
• 1853: Lectures on Quaternions
• Elements of Quaternions (posthumous)

Also see

• John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson: "William Rowan Hamilton": MacTutor History of Mathematics archive

• Eric Temple Bell: Men of Mathematics (1937): Chapter $\text{XIX}$