Maths Week Ireland 2010

摘要

When William Rowan Hamilton set out from his home at Dunsink Observatory on October 16, 1843 to chair a meeting of the Royal Irish Academy, he was setting out on a walk that would be immortalised in mathematics history. For several years he had been grappling with the problem of developing an algebra for a three dimensional number system. Then, in a flash of inspiration it came to him - it couldn't be done in three dimensions but it could be done in four dimensional space.