It takes its name from Broome Bridge, which crosses the canal, a place best known as where William Rowan Hamilton discovered the mathematical notion of quaternions.
Actually this simple use of "quaternions" was first presented by Euler some seventy years earlier than Hamilton to solve the problem of magic squares.
Named after Sir William Rowan Hamilton, arguably Ireland's greatest mathematician, the Society was developed to provide outlets for students interested in art, languages, history and the physical sciences.
In 1843, while walking with his wife along the Royal Canal, Sir William Rowan Hamilton realised the formula for quaternions and carved his initial thoughts into a stone on the Brougham Bridge over the canal.
This algebra admits a convenient description, due to William Rowan Hamilton, by means of quaternions.
William Shakespeare | Hamilton | William Laud | Hamilton, Ontario | William Blake | William | William III of England | William Morris | William McKinley | Hamilton, New Zealand | William Howard Taft | William Ewart Gladstone | William the Conqueror | William S. Burroughs | William Shatner | William Faulkner | William Randolph Hearst | William Wordsworth | William Tecumseh Sherman | William Hogarth | Prince William, Duke of Cambridge | William Penn | Hamilton Tiger-Cats | William Jennings Bryan | William Gibson | William Wilberforce | William James | William Makepeace Thackeray | Fort William | William Hanna |
Guthrie’s brother passed on the question to his mathematics teacher Augustus de Morgan at University College, who mentioned it in a letter to William Hamilton in 1852.
It appears to have been used by James Bradley, but its practical development is mainly from Sir William Rowan Hamilton, who published an account of it in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy in 1846.
Born in Dublin 4 December 1806, he was son of John Crosbie Graves, barrister, grandnephew of Richard Graves, D.D., and cousin of Robert James Graves, M.D. He was an undergraduate at Trinity College, Dublin, where he distinguished himself in both science and classics, and was a class-fellow and friend of William Rowan Hamilton, graduating B.A. in 1827.
Heaviside however presented these equations in modern vector format using the nabla operator (∇) devised by William Rowan Hamilton in 1837,