Life
1805-1865; b. 4 Aug. 36 Lwr. Dominick St., Dublin; became Professor of Astronomy at Trinity College Dublin, and Astronomer Royal while still an undergraduate; contrib. to Dublin Literary Weekly; his inaugural lecture on astronomy at TCD, 8 Nov. 1832, was reprinted in the newly-founded Dublin University Review, Vol. 1 No. 1. (January 1833); honorary member of the Academy of St. Petersberg, Astronomer Royal for Ireland, President of the RIA (1837-46), linguist and poet; lectures on quaternions, 1843; Elements of Quaternions (1866); he inscribed formula for quaternions on parapet of Broom [Brougham] Bridge on the Grand Canal while walking with his wife, 16 Oct. 1843; abilities impaired by deteriorating marital relations and drinking in later life; d. 2 Sept. Dublin; biography by Robert Perceval Graves (1882) while Charles Jasper Joly (1864-1906) edited his Quaternions and published a Manual of Quaterions (1905); portrait of Hamilton by Thom. Kirk. CAB PI DNB TAY DIB DIW DIH RAF OCEL OCIL
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Works
Numerous poems incl. in Robert Perceval P. Graves, The Life of Sir W. Rowan Hamilton: Professor of Astronomy in University of Dublin and Royal Astronomer of Ireland, incl. selection from his poems, corr., and miscell. writing (Dublin: Hodges Figgis 1882) [from which Mary Moorman quotes in her biography of Wordsworth]. His introductory lecture on Astronomy at TCD, held among the Madden Papers of the Gilbert Collection as MS 282 (Pearse St. Library, Dublin) was was printed in Dublin University Magazine (Jan. 1833).
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Criticism
Robert Percival Graves, Life of Sir William Rowan Hamilton: Including Selections from His Poems, Correspondence, and Miscellaneous Writings 3 vols. (London: Longmans 1882-89).
Herbert V. Fackler, ‘Wordsworth in Ireland, 1829: A Survey of His Tour’, Éire-Ireland, 6, 1 (Spring 1971), pp.53-64.
Sean O’Donnell, William Rowan Hamilton: Portrait of a Prodigy (Dublin: Boole Press 1983). See also Irish Book Lover 2. See also remarks on Hamilton in Speeches of the Rt. Hon. J. P. Curran [...] on the late [...] State Trials [2nd edn.] (Dublin: Stockdale 1808).
Barbara Hayley, ‘Irish Periodicals’, in Anglo-Irish Studies, ii, (1976), pp.83-108.
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Notes
Dictionary of National Biography, competed as a child with Zerah Colburn, ‘the calculating boy’; at 16 detected error in Laplace’s Mechanique Céleste; double first at TCD; twice won Vice-Chancellor’s poetry prize; predicted ‘conical refraction’ while an undergraduate; appoint ed Andrews chair of Astronomy, 1827; astronomer royal of Ireland; gold medal, RSoc. for optical discovery, and for theory of general method of dynamics, 1834; knighted 1835; Pres. RIA, 1837; published Lectures on Quaternions (1853); Elements of Quarternions (1866), appeared posthumously.
Geoffrey Taylor, Irish Poets of the 19th c. (1951). Taylor, Aubrey de Vere reports that Coleridge and Hamilton were the only men to whom Wordsworth would think of applying the term wonderful.
Margaret Drabble, Oxford Companion of English Literature (Oxford: OUP 1985), entry on Hamilton describes him as a mathematician and a friend of Wordsworth - who stayed with him at Dunsink in 1829 - Coleridge, Edgeworth and others.
Belfast Linenhall Library holds R. P. Graves, Life of Sir William Rowan Hamilton, 3 Vol. (1882-89).
Math-game: Archibald Hamilton invented a topological game of current interest to mathematicians (Radio Éireann, 29 April 1991).
Drink problem: R. L. Graves’s biography makes extensive references to Hamilton's marital unhappiness and his drinking, whilst more recent biographical accounts do not.
A Portrait of William Rowan Hamilton by Thomas Kirk (see Anne Crookshank Irish Portraits [Exhibition Catalogue], Ulster Museum 1965).
Icosian Game, invented by Sir William Rowan Hamilton, and consisting in 20 numbered pieces in the shape of plugs which are moved on a round board configured in irradiating variable pentagons with plug-holes at each juncture. The board is held in the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin (RIA).
Wordsworth plain: Mary Moorman quotes from the life of Hamilton by Robert Perceval P. Graves (1882) in her biography of the English romantic poet.
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)