Download or read book Great Astronomers written by Robert Stawell Ball and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2019-04-19 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Great Astronomers: William Rowan Hamiltonby Robert Stawell BallSir William Rowan Hamilton MRIA (4 August 1805 - 2 September 1865) was an Irish mathematician. While still an undergraduate he was appointed Andrews professor of Astronomy and Royal Astronomer of Ireland, and lived at Dunsink Observatory. He made important contributions to optics, classical mechanics and algebra. Although Hamilton was not a physicist-he regarded himself as a pure mathematician-his work was of major importance to physics, particularly his reformulation of Newtonian mechanics, now called Hamiltonian mechanics. This work has proven central to the modern study of classical field theories such as electromagnetism, and to the development of quantum mechanics. In pure mathematics, he is best known as the inventor of quaternions