Mathematician: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.
- -- Eric Temple Bell: Men of Mathematics, 1937, Victor Gollancz, London
Ireland
George Berkeley $($$\text {1685}$ – $\text {1753}$$)$
Also known under the name Bishop Berkeley.
Anglo-Irish mathematician and philosopher best known nowadays for his critique of the philosophical underpinnings of calculus as it had been developed by Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz and Isaac Newton.
Incisive intellectual, noted humanitarian, and, by all accounts, all-round good guy.
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Dionysius Lardner $($$\text {1793}$ – $\text {1859}$$)$
Irish scientific writer and populariser of science.
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William Rowan Hamilton $($$\text {1805}$ – $\text {1865}$$)$
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.
John Thomas Graves $($$\text {1806}$ – $\text {1870}$$)$
Irish jurist and mathematician who both inspired William Rowan Hamilton to discover the quaternions, and discovered the octonions, which he called the octaves.
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George Boole $($$\text {1815}$ – $\text {1864}$$)$
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 Gabriel Stokes $($$\text {1819}$ – $\text {1903}$$)$
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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George Salmon $($$\text {1819}$ – $\text {1904}$$)$
Irish mathematician and Anglican theologian who worked in algebraic geometry.
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Morgan William Crofton $($$\text {1826}$ – $\text {1915}$$)$
Irish mathematician who contributed to the field of geometric probability theory.
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Henry John Stephen Smith $($$\text {1826}$ – $\text {1883}$$)$
Irish mathematician remembered for his work in elementary divisors, quadratic forms, and the Smith-Minkowski-Siegel Mass Formula in number theory.
Devised the Smith Normal Form of a matrix.
Also worked on elliptic functions.
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Alicia Boole Stott $($$\text {1860}$ – $\text {1940}$$)$
Irish-English mathematician who made substantial contributions to the field of four-dimensional geometry, which she famously grasped at a very early age.
Coined the word polytope.
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James Cullen $($$\text {1867}$ – $\text {1933}$$)$
Irish Jesuit priest who also developed some results in number theory.
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Carew Arthur Meredith $($$\text {1904}$ – $\text {1976}$$)$
Irish mathematician and logician best known for his work on development of the shortest known axiomatic bases for logical systems.
Developed the technique of condensed detachment, which is particularly convenient for use in automated theorem solvers.
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William Hunter McCrea $($$\text {1904}$ – $\text {1999}$$)$
Irish mathematician, physicist and astronomer who specialised in solar physics.
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Victor Meally $($$\text {1911}$ – $\text {1986}$$)$
Irish mathematician, philosopher and accountant, best known for being the editor of the Encyclopedia of Ireland.
Made considerable contributions to number theory and recreational mathematics.
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Patrick Michael Fitzpatrick $($$\text {b. 1946}$$)$
Irish-born mathematician, now working in the U.S., mainly working in the fields of Analysis and Topology.
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Gerard John Murphy $($$\text {1948}$ – $\text {2006}$$)$
Irish mathematician who worked in functional analysis.
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