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PHYSICIST

William Rowan Hamilton

1805 - 1865

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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.

Memorability Metrics

  • 910k

    Page Views (PV)

  • 69.57

    Historical Popularity Index (HPI)

  • 72

    Languages Editions (L)

  • 9.86

    Effective Languages (L*)

  • 3.88

    Coefficient of Variation (CV)

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Among PHYSICISTS

Among physicists, William Rowan Hamilton ranks 73 out of 717Before 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.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1805, William Rowan Hamilton ranks 7Before 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 7Before 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.

Others Born in 1805

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Others Deceased in 1865

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In Ireland

Among people born in Ireland, William Rowan Hamilton ranks 13 out of 501Before 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).

Among PHYSICISTS In Ireland

Among physicists born in Ireland, William Rowan Hamilton ranks 1After him are John Tyndall (1820), Ernest Walton (1903), George Francis FitzGerald (1851), George Johnstone Stoney (1826), John Sealy Townsend (1868), and John Joly (1857).