1805 - 1865
Sir William Rowan Hamilton MRIA, FRAS (3/4 August 1805 – 2 September 1865) was an Irish mathematician, astronomer, and physicist. He was the Andrews Professor of Astronomy at Trinity College Dublin, and Royal Astronomer of Ireland, living at Dunsink Observatory. Hamilton was Dunsink's third director, having worked there from 1827 to 1865. Read more on Wikipedia
Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of William Rowan Hamilton has received more than 905,955 page views. His biography is available in 72 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 68 in 2019). William Rowan Hamilton is the 73rd most popular physicist (up from 83rd in 2019), the 13th most popular biography from Ireland (up from 20th in 2019) and the most popular Irish Physicist.
William Rowan Hamilton is most famous for his work in mathematics. He is credited with inventing quaternions, a four-dimensional number system.
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Among physicists, William Rowan Hamilton ranks 73 out of 717. Before him are Robert Andrews Millikan, Emil Lenz, Roger Penrose, William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, and Max von Laue. After him are Carl Zeiss, Jean Baptiste Perrin, Lawrence Bragg, Wilhelm Eduard Weber, Owen Willans Richardson, and Gustav Ludwig Hertz.
1868 - 1953
HPI: 69.87
Rank: 67
1804 - 1865
HPI: 69.76
Rank: 68
1931 - Present
HPI: 69.71
Rank: 69
1824 - 1907
HPI: 69.64
Rank: 70
1842 - 1919
HPI: 69.62
Rank: 71
1879 - 1960
HPI: 69.58
Rank: 72
1805 - 1865
HPI: 69.57
Rank: 73
1816 - 1888
HPI: 69.50
Rank: 74
1870 - 1942
HPI: 69.37
Rank: 75
1890 - 1971
HPI: 69.26
Rank: 76
1804 - 1891
HPI: 69.24
Rank: 77
1879 - 1959
HPI: 69.23
Rank: 78
1887 - 1975
HPI: 69.23
Rank: 79
Among people born in 1805, William Rowan Hamilton ranks 7. Before him are Hans Christian Andersen, Alexis de Tocqueville, Giuseppe Mazzini, Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet, Princess Sophie of Bavaria, and Ferdinand de Lesseps. After him are Joseph Smith, Fanny Mendelssohn, Louis Auguste Blanqui, Maria Anna of Bavaria, Franz Xaver Winterhalter, and Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin. Among people deceased in 1865, William Rowan Hamilton ranks 7. Before him are Abraham Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Leopold I of Belgium, Ignaz Semmelweis, and Emil Lenz. After him are Anna Pavlovna of Russia, Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, Nicholas Alexandrovich, Tsesarevich of Russia, Christian Jürgensen Thomsen, Heinrich Barth, and Robert FitzRoy.
1805 - 1875
HPI: 87.84
Rank: 1
1805 - 1859
HPI: 74.03
Rank: 2
1805 - 1872
HPI: 73.12
Rank: 3
1805 - 1859
HPI: 72.67
Rank: 4
1805 - 1872
HPI: 72.01
Rank: 5
1805 - 1894
HPI: 70.39
Rank: 6
1805 - 1865
HPI: 69.57
Rank: 7
1805 - 1844
HPI: 67.97
Rank: 8
1805 - 1847
HPI: 65.93
Rank: 9
1805 - 1881
HPI: 65.25
Rank: 10
1805 - 1877
HPI: 63.91
Rank: 11
1805 - 1873
HPI: 63.72
Rank: 12
1805 - 1871
HPI: 61.83
Rank: 13
1809 - 1865
HPI: 85.22
Rank: 1
1838 - 1865
HPI: 79.24
Rank: 2
1809 - 1865
HPI: 74.09
Rank: 3
1790 - 1865
HPI: 73.68
Rank: 4
1818 - 1865
HPI: 73.48
Rank: 5
1804 - 1865
HPI: 69.76
Rank: 6
1805 - 1865
HPI: 69.57
Rank: 7
1795 - 1865
HPI: 67.83
Rank: 8
1784 - 1865
HPI: 64.16
Rank: 9
1843 - 1865
HPI: 62.87
Rank: 10
1788 - 1865
HPI: 62.05
Rank: 11
1821 - 1865
HPI: 61.06
Rank: 12
1805 - 1865
HPI: 60.88
Rank: 13
Among people born in Ireland, William Rowan Hamilton ranks 13 out of 501. Before him are Samuel Beckett (1906), Michael Gambon (1940), Edmund Burke (1729), Pierce Brosnan (1953), Bram Stoker (1847), and Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1769). After him are Sir George Stokes, 1st Baronet (1819), Francis Bacon (1909), John Scotus Eriugena (810), Richard Harris (1930), Anne Bonny (1702), and W. B. Yeats (1865).
1906 - 1989
HPI: 76.10
Rank: 7
1940 - 2023
HPI: 71.82
Rank: 8
1729 - 1797
HPI: 71.81
Rank: 9
1953 - Present
HPI: 71.81
Rank: 10
1847 - 1912
HPI: 71.15
Rank: 11
1769 - 1852
HPI: 70.65
Rank: 12
1805 - 1865
HPI: 69.57
Rank: 13
1819 - 1903
HPI: 69.48
Rank: 14
1909 - 1992
HPI: 68.97
Rank: 15
810 - 877
HPI: 68.78
Rank: 16
1930 - 2002
HPI: 68.74
Rank: 17
1702 - 1782
HPI: 68.37
Rank: 18
1865 - 1939
HPI: 67.85
Rank: 19
Among physicists born in Ireland, William Rowan Hamilton ranks 1. After him are John Tyndall (1820), Ernest Walton (1903), George Francis FitzGerald (1851), George Johnstone Stoney (1826), John Sealy Townsend (1868), and John Joly (1857).
1805 - 1865
HPI: 69.57
Rank: 1
1820 - 1893
HPI: 60.03
Rank: 2
1903 - 1995
HPI: 59.59
Rank: 3
1851 - 1901
HPI: 57.16
Rank: 4
1826 - 1911
HPI: 56.37
Rank: 5
1868 - 1957
HPI: 49.93
Rank: 6
1857 - 1933
HPI: 41.09
Rank: 7