Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton died in 1865 but his work remains critical for many scientists today, such as space flight engineers, protein biologists and artificial intelligence researchers.
This week he is remembered at his alma mater, Trinity College Dublin (TCD), with a conference of leading thinkers and mathematicians, which takes place on Thursday and Friday.
“His research was groundbreaking at the time but what is truly astounding is how it is still at the centre of some of the most flourishing work today,” says Prof Samson Shatashvili, chair of natural philosophy (1847) and the director of the Hamilton Mathematics Institute at TCD.
Rowan Hamilton was a student at the college from the age of 15 and kept strong links to it throughout his working life. On Thursday, Prof Nigel Hitchen of Oxford University will give a public lecture on his life story and discoveries.
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A lot has been written about Hamilton’s greatest discovery, the quaternion equations which described the relative movement of objects in 3D space in four dimensions. Hitchin will also consider other lesser known areas of his work, including Hamilton’s contribution to the study of geometric optics, how light rays move through space; conical refraction, how light rays are bent into a cone shape as they pass through something like a wall; and quartic surfaces, which is used in algebra.
His success was not matched in his relationships outside of mathematics. He fell in love with Catherine Disney in 1824 when he was 19 and she was 24, but she was compelled to marry the 32-year-old Rev William Barrow. Losing Catherine left Hamilton apparently prone to depression and alcohol abuse throughout his life.
This did not prevent him from achieving mathematical greatness, however. The seminal moment came in 1847 when, while walking along Dublin’s Royal Canal near Cabra, the idea of quaternions came to him.
These equations solved a problem he had been mulling over for years: how could one best describe how objects moved in the three-dimensional space we all inhabit? He became so excited that he etched the equation into the stone of nearby Broom Bridge, an act that is now famous in mathematical history.
Hamilton was recognised in his lifetime when elected a fellow of the American Academy and won the Royal Medal of the Royal Society for his work on conical refraction. He was also active in the British Association for the Advancement of Science, trying to promote the greater collaboration of scientists worldwide.
[ The mind of the mathematicianOpens in new window ]
“Having spent his entire life studying and working in Trinity, we are justifiably proud of his achievements and what he did to transform the study of mathematics here in Ireland and across the globe,” Shatashvili says.
Dame Joycelyn Bell Burnell, the renowned astronomer who discovered pulsars, a new type of star, in 1967, will speak to the conference about how the breakthrough occurred.
Other speakers include Gregory Gabadadze, professor of physics, New York University; Maxim Kontsevich, chair for mathematics, Institute des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques in Bures-sur-Yvette, France; Andrei Okounkov professor of mathematics, Columbia University, New York; and Prof Erik Verlinde, University of Amsterdam.
Those interested in attending the Hitchin public lecture, or other talks, must register on the conference website.
