Sir William Rowan Hamilton
On 16 October 1843 (a Monday) Hamilton was walking in along the Royal Canal with his wife to preside at a Council meeting of the Royal Irish Academy. Although his wife talked to him now and again Hamilton hardly heard, for the discovery of the quaternions, the first noncommutative algebra to be studied, was taking shape in his mind:-

And here there dawned on me the notion that we must admit, in some sense, a fourth dimension of space for the purpose of calculating with triples ... An electric circuit seemed to close, and a spark flashed forth.

He could not resist the impulse to carve the formulae for the quaternions

ì^2 = j^2 = k^2 = i*j*k = -1.

Hver dagur í lífi Sir Hamiltons hefur verið öðrum áhugaverðari.

posted by Ásgeir at 18:30