Who's Hamilton
William Rowan Hamilton was an Irish physicist and mathematician who discovered quaternions and revolutionized linear algebra and physics.
While walking near Broom's bridge in Dublin with his wife, Hamilton—in a stroke of genius—realized how to purely describe 3D rotations. He ran over and edged his famous formula in the stone.
Like how complex numbers purely describe all 2D rotations, quaternions solve the inherent problems in Euler angles.
What makes the universe tick was a central question since Plato. Overtime different principles emerged but none were perfect.
Eventually Lagrange introduced the idea that objects moved to the lowest total energy. Hamilton eventually developed this idea and "completed" Lagrangian Mechanics but decided to take it further with the development of Hamiltonian Mechanics which showed objects one to minimize action potential. This provided the foundation of quantum mechanics.
Sir William Rowan Hamilton is not to be confused with:
- Alexander Hamilton, the American founding father
- William Hamilton, Alex's son
- Lord Hamilton, a title in Scotland
- Sir William Hamilton, British Ambassador to Naples
- William Hamilton, the guy who tried shooting Queen Victoria.