Mien r uno biography of william hamilton

They were put together in consequence of the publication of the Article on Sir W. I felt it, therefore, incumbent on me to endeavour that these errors should not go down to posterity in a book of such high authority without an effort at correction. It was replied to by Mr. Anderson, the author of the Dictionary Article; and he has obligingly permitted me to reprint his reply, which is required for the full presentation of the discussion.

Rowan Hamilton, the distinguished mathematician and discoverer of quaternions. As the author of a biography of Rowan Hamilton referred to in it, I feel I ought to place on record a correction of some errors occurring in its opening and some subsequent paragraphs. Trusting that you will allow me to do this in your pages, I ask you to reprint these paragraphs, and to add the observations I am obliged to make There are in the above paragraph numerous misstatements.

The most important, to which the others are incidental, is the assertion of the Scottish parentage of Sir W. Hamilton's father. It will, therefore, be convenient to deal with this in the first place, and to correct the others as they crop up. The apothecary had also brought a second son, James, from Scotland.

William!!'Y!!: RalIil ton I Jr. Subm1 tted to the Uld versit,.

It is to be remarked that the information on which this entry was founded was furnished by James Hamilton himself. It determines his birth to the year The family was, it thus appears, established in Dublin. But, as confirming Irish extraction of an anterior date, we also know that the father of William Rowan Hamilton concerning whom I have heard from Sir Rowan Hamilton's sister Sydney that his Christian name was Francis married a Miss believed Margaret Blood; this lady was in her extreme old age she lived to be above a hundred seen by Sir.

Hamilton's sister Eliza, as mentioned in my biography, and was of a well-known family settled in Ireland in the reign of James I.