A WEEKLY ILLUSTRATED JOURNAL OF SCIENCE 



" To the solid ground 

 Of Nature trusts the mind which builds for aye.'" — WORDSWORTH 



THURSDAY, MAY 3, 1883 



LIFE OF SIR WILLIAM ROWAN HAMILTON 



Life of Sir William Rowan Hamilton, Andrews Professor 

 of Astronomy in the University of Dublin, and Royal 

 Astronomer of Ireland j including Selections from his 

 Poems, Correspondence, and Miscellaneous Writings. 

 By Robert Perceval Graves, M.A., Sub-Dean of the 

 Chapel Royal, Dublin. Vol. I. pp. 692. (Dublin 

 University Press Series, 1882.) 



WE are glad to welcome the appearance of the first 

 volume of this work, which has long been eagerly 

 watched for by those interested in the career of the won- 

 derful genius whose life is here narrated. To many 

 readers this volume will afford material for no little 

 surprise. Sir William Rowan Hamilton is known to fame 

 as a mathematician. He is known by his memoirs on 

 systems of rays ; by his discovery of the great dynamical 

 generalisation which is implied in his theory of the cha- 

 racteristic function ; by his exquisitely beautiful prediction 

 of the phenomena of conical refraction ; and above all by 

 his theory of quaternions — an imposing mass of profound 

 thought which must be ranked with the very greatest 

 mathematical achievements of any age or nation. Yet 

 here we have a very portly volume of almost seven 

 hundred pages, of which only an extremely small fraction 

 is devoted to Hamilton's mathematical work. The pro- 

 gress of his papers on rays is here and there referred to, 

 and there is an interesting historical chapter on conical 

 refraction, but we may turn in vain to the index for a 

 reference to quaternions, and we have only noticed the 

 word occurring once or twice in the entire volume. But 

 the surprise will disappear when the reader begins to 

 make acquaintance with the volume. He will then see 

 that Hamilton's mathematical labours were only one of 

 the forms in which his most extraordinary genius was 

 manifested. He will see that the early years of Hamilton's 

 life afforded such copious materials to a biographer that 

 the present volume only extends to the time when 

 Hamilton had attained the age of twenty-seven, and that 

 the crowning achievement of quaternions by which 

 Vol. xxviii.— No. 705 



Hamilton is best known was the fruit of his riper years, 

 and belongs to his subsequent career. 



At the Cambridge meeting of the British Association 

 in 1833, Prof. Sedgwick spoke of Hamilton — then twenty- 

 eight years old — as " a man who possessed within himself 

 powers and talents perhaps never before combined within 

 one philosophical character." The volume before us 

 bears testimony which would go a long way towards justi- 

 fying this eulogium. We think that Sir W. Hamilton 

 has been fortunate in having a biographer so careful in 

 his facts and so skilful in the manipulation of his copious 

 materials as Mr. Graves has proved himself to be. 

 Hamilton had the habit of putting on record very minute 

 circumstances. He preserved copies of a large propor- 

 tion of the letters and notes written by him, whether 

 important or not ; he often recorded the hour at which 

 they were despatched, and the person to whom they were 

 intrusted for the post. The enormous mass thus accu- 

 mulated during a long and very studious life were left at 

 Hamilton's death in a state of utter confusion, and it hat 

 been the laborious duty of his biographer to extract from 

 the mass those materials which were suitable for his 

 purpose. The very extensive correspondence of Hamilton 

 is also a source from which his biographer has obtained 

 much aid. Of his own qualifications for the task the 

 biographer thus modestly expresses himself in the 

 preface : — 



" The public has some right to inquire why one who 

 has to confess himself to be no mathematician should 

 have undertaken the present work. To such an inquiry 

 I may reply as follows : that although unconnected with 

 Sir \V. R. Hamilton by any tie of kindred, I became his 

 friend in the youth of both of us, and that our friendship 

 continued unbroken till the day of his death ; that when 

 he was applied to by the Editor of the Dublin University 

 Magazine in 184.1 to name a friend who should be re- 

 quested to supply to that magazine a biographical sketch 

 for insertion in its portrait gallery of distinguished Irish- 

 men, he did me the honour of designating me, and 

 furnished me with the necessary facts ; that he afterwards 

 sought my consent to his nomination of me as his literary 

 executor, — a nomination however which, he told me 

 afterwards, he thought right to withhold when he found 

 that the remainder of my life would probably be spent in 

 England, and that I should therefore be unable to fulfil 



B 



