Creators of mathematics: the Irish connection, Ken Houston (ed.). Pp. 160. £10.99. 2000. ISBN 1 900621 495 (University College Dublin Press).

Abstract

Creators of mathematics: the Irish connection, Ken Houston (ed.). Pp. 160. £10.99. 2000. ISBN 1 900621 495 (University College Dublin Press). Ireland is rarely mentioned in histories of mathematics except to include Hamilton or perhaps Boole. It is not surprising, however, considering the proximity to England and the existence of Trinity College, Dublin since 1592 that Ireland has made some contribution to the world of mathematics. Creators of mathematics: the Irish connection is a collection of short biographies of the more famous mathematicians who were born or lived in Ireland for some of their working life. The earliest reference is to Thomas Harriot (1560-1621), a very accomplished Renaissance mathematician who worked for Walter Ralegh as navigator and surveyor in the New World and lived in Ireland from 1587 to 1598. The most recent biography is of Paddy Kennedy, from Cork, brilliant, hard-working and eccentric who died tragically in 1966. The greatest and best known of Irish mathematicians is, of course, William Rowan Hamilton (1805-1865). Hamilton grew up in Trim, Co. Meath and was widely read in oriental, classical and modern languages at a young age. He went on to have an illustrious undergraduate career and was awarded the position of Astronomer Royal of Ireland in his early twenties. He is remembered today in the areas of quantum physics, where he gives his name to the Hamiltonian function and in abstract algebra for quaternions. The discovery of the latter is the stuff of legend. The idea came to him in a moment of epiphany as Hamilton was walking from his observatory to a meeting at the Royal Irish Academy. He was so elated to have solved the problem he had been working on for fifteen years, that he there and then carved the famous identity i 2 =f = k 1 = ijk =-1 onto a stone of Brougham Bridge. George Boole (1815-64) was born and grew up in Lincoln. He was the son of a carpenter and was self-taught. Like Hamilton, Boole learnt Latin and Greek as a young boy. In the 1840s he gained renown as a mathematician after the publication of articles on calculus. He published his first book on Logic and was recommended for the position of Professor of Mathematics in the newly founded Queen's College Cork in 1847. Boole spent the rest of his life in Cork. The University is proud of this connection and has named the library after him. His biography is a very happy story-from poverty and disadvantage to success, respect and posthumous celebrity. It is told here by a frequent contributor to the Gazette and current Professor of Mathematics in the same University, Des MacHale.