Mathematician:John Thomas Graves

Mathematician

Irish jurist and mathematician who both inspired William Rowan Hamilton to discover the quaternions, and discovered the octonions, which he called the octaves.

Brother of both the mathematician Charles Graves and the writer and clergyman Robert Perceval Graves.

Nationality

Irish

History

• Born: 4 December 1806 in Dublin, Ireland
• Died: 29 March 1870 in Cheltenham, England

Theorems and Definitions

• Eight Squares Identity
• Graves-Cayley Numbers (with Arthur Cayley) (also known as Cayley Numbers or Octonions)

Definitions of concepts named for John Thomas Graves can be found here.

Publications

• 1829: An Attempt to Rectify the Inaccuracy of some Logarithmic Formulae
• 1836: On the lately proposed logarithms of unity, in reply to Professor De Morgan

Sources

• John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson: "John Thomas Graves": MacTutor History of Mathematics archive