References for William Rowan Hamilton

1. T L Hankins, Biography in Dictionary of Scientific Biography (New York 1970-1990).
2. Biography in Encyclopaedia Britannica. [Available on the Web]

Books:

3. R P Graves, Life of Sir William Rowan Hamilton (1975) (3 volumes).
4. T L Hankins, Sir William Rowan Hamilton (Baltimore, 1980).
5. S O'Donnell, William Rowan Hamilton. Portrait of a Prodigy (Dublin, 1983).

Articles:

6. P V Arunachalam, W R Hamilton and his quaternions, Math. Ed. 6 (4) (1990), 261-266.
7. H Bateman, Hamilton's work in dynamics and its influence on modern thought, Scripta Math. 10 (1944), 51-63.
8. A Conway, W Hamilton, his life, work, and influence, in Proc. Second Canadian Math. Congress, Vancouver, 1949 (Toronto, 1951), 32-41.
9. R Dimitric and B Goldsmith, Sir William Rowan Hamilton, The Mathematical Intelligencer 11 (2) (1989), 29-30.
10. J Hendry, The evolution of William Rowan Hamilton's view of algebra as the science of pure time, Stud. Hist. Philos. Sci. 15 (1) (1984), 63-81.
11. T Koetsier, Explanation in the historiography of mathematics: the case of Hamilton's quaternions, Stud. Hist. Philos. Sci. 26 (4) (1995), 593-616.
12. N G Krotkova, The generalized complex numbers of W R Hamilton and De Morgan (Russian), in History and methodology of the natural sciences (Moscow, 1973), 127-130.
13. L M Laita, Influences on Boole's logic : the controversy between William Hamilton and Augustus De Morgan, Ann. of Sci. 36 (1) (1979), 45-65.
14. J Lambek If Hamilton had prevailed : quaternions in physics, Math. Intelligencer 17 (4) (1995), 7-15.
15. C C MacDuffee, Algebra's debt to Hamilton. Scripta Math. 10 (1944), 25-35.
16. A Macfarlane, Lectures on Ten British Mathematicians of the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1916), 34-49. A pdf version
17. J Mathews, William Rowan Hamilton's paper of 1837 on the arithmetization of analysis, Arch. History Exact Sci. 19 (2) (1978/79), 177-200.
18. A J McConnell, Hamilton's work in applied mathematics, Bull. Inst. Math. Appl. 13 (9-10) (1977), 228-233.
19. N D McMillan, History of mathematics : J MacCullagh and W R Hamilton - the triumph of Irish mathematics 1827-1865, Irish Math. Soc. Newslett. 14 (1985), 50-61.
20. M Nakane, The role of the three-body problem in W R Hamilton's construction of the characteristic function for mechanics, Historia Sci. (2) 1 (1) (1991), 27-38.
21. J G O'Hara, The prediction and discovery of conical refraction by William Rowan Hamilton and Humphrey Lloyd (1832-1833), Proc. Roy. Irish Acad. Sect. A 82 (2) (1982), 231-257.
22. J O'Neill, Formalism, Hamilton and complex numbers, Stud. Hist. Philos. Sci. 17 (3) (1986), 351-372.
23. T Ogawa, His final step to Hamilton's discovery of the characteristic function, J. College Arts Sci. Chiba Univ. B 23 (1990), 45-62.
24. P Ohrstrom, W R Hamilton's view of algebra as the science of pure time and his revision of this view, Historia Math. 12 (1) (1985), 45-55.
25. H T H Piaggio, The significance and development of Hamilton's quaternions, Nature 152 (1943), 553-555.
26. L S Polak, William Rowan Hamilton (on the 150th anniversary of his birth) (Russian), Trudy Inst. Istor. Estest. Tehn. 15 (1956), 206-276.
27. Several articles, in Proc. Royal Irish Acad. 50A (1945), 69-121.
28. J L Synge, The life and early work of Sir William Rowan Hamilton, Scripta Math. 10 (1944), 13-24.
29. B L van der Waerden, Hamilton's discovery of quaternions, Math. Mag. 49 (5) (1976), 227-234.
30. E Whittaker, William Rowan Hamilton, in Morris Kline (ed.), Mathematics in the modern world (1968), 49-52.
31. A T Winterbourne, Algebra and pure time : Hamilton's affinity with Kant, Historia Math. 9 (2) (1982), 195-200.

June 1998