Great Astronomers - Robert Stawell Ball (the little red hen ebook .TXT) 📗

driven; and

although she talked with me now and then, yet an UNDERCURRENT of

thought was going on in my mind which gave at last a RESULT,

whereof it is not too much to say that I felt AT ONCE the

importance. An ELECTRIC circuit seemed to CLOSE; and a spark

flashed forth the herald (as I FORESAW IMMEDIATELY) of many long

years to come of definitely directed thought and work by MYSELF,

if spared, and, at all events, on the part of OTHERS if I should

even be allowed to live long enough distinctly to communicate the

discovery. Nor could I resist the impulse—unphilosophical as it

may have been—to cut with a knife on a stone of Brougham Bridge as

we passed it, the fundamental formula which contains the SOLUTION

of the PROBLEM, but, of course, the inscription has long since

mouldered away. A more durable notice remains, however, on the

Council Books of the Academy for that day (October 16, 1843),

which records the fact that I then asked for and obtained leave to

read a Paper on ‘Quaternions,’ at the First General Meeting of the

Session; which reading took place accordingly, on Monday,

the 13th of November following.”

 

Writing to Professor Tait, Hamilton gives further particulars of

the same event. And again in a letter to the Rev. J. W. Stubbs:—

 

“To-morrow will be the fifteenth birthday of the Quaternions.

They started into life full-grown on the 16th October, 1843, as I

was walking with Lady Hamilton to Dublin, and came up to Brougham

Bridge—which my boys have since called Quaternion Bridge. I

pulled out a pocketbook which still exists, and made entry, on

which at the very moment I felt that it might be worth my while to

expend the labour of at least ten or fifteen years to come. But

then it is fair to say that this was because I felt a problem to

have been at that moment solved, an intellectual want relieved

which had haunted me for at least fifteen years before.

 

But did the thought of establishing such a system, in which

geometrically opposite facts—namely, two lines (or areas) which

are opposite IN SPACE give ALWAYS a positive product—ever come

into anybody’s head till I was led to it in October, 1843, by

trying to extend my old theory of algebraic couples, and of

algebra as the science of pure time? As to my regarding

geometrical addition of lines as equivalent to composition of

motions (and as performed by the same rules), that is indeed

essential in my theory but not peculiar to it; on the contrary, I

am only one of many who have been led to this view of addition.”

 

Pilgrims in future ages will doubtless visit the spot commemorated

by the invention of Quaternions. Perhaps as they look at that by

no means graceful structure Quaternion Bridge, they will regret

that the hand of some Old Mortality had not been occasionally

employed in cutting the memorable inscription afresh. It is now

irrecoverably lost.

 

It was ten years after the discovery that the great volume

appeared under the title of “Lectures on Quaternions,” Dublin,

1853. The reception of this work by the scientific world was

such as might have been expected from the extraordinary reputation

of its author, and the novelty and importance of the new calculus.

His valued friend, Sir John Herschel, writes to him in that style

of which he was a master:—

 

“Now, most heartily let me congratulate you on getting out your

book—on having found utterance, ore rotundo, for all that

labouring and seething mass of thought which has been from time to

time sending out sparks, and gleams, and smokes, and shaking the

soil about you; but now breaks into a good honest eruption, with a

lava stream and a shower of fertilizing ashes.

 

Metaphor and simile apart, there is work for a twelvemonth to

any man to read such a book, and for half a lifetime to digest it,

and I am glad to see it brought to a conclusion.”

 

We may also record Hamilton’s own opinion expressed to Humphrey

Lloyd:—

 

“In general, although in one sense I hope that I am actually

growing modest about the quaternions, from my seeing so many peeps

and vistas into future expansions of their principles, I still

must assert that this discovery appears to me to be as important

for the middle of the nineteenth century as the discovery of

fluxions was for the close of the seventeenth.”

 

Bartholomew Lloyd died in 1837. He had been the Provost of

Trinity College, and the President of the Royal Irish Academy.

Three candidates were put forward by their respective friends for

the vacant Presidency. One was Humphrey Lloyd, the son of the

late Provost, and the two others were Hamilton and Archbishop

Whately. Lloyd from the first urged strongly the claims of

Hamilton, and deprecated the putting forward of his own name.

Hamilton in like manner desired to withdraw in favour of Lloyd.

The wish was strongly felt by many of the Fellows of the College

that Lloyd should be elected, in consequence of his having a more

intimate association with collegiate life than Hamilton; while his

scientific eminence was world-wide. The election ultimately gave

Hamilton a considerable majority over Lloyd, behind whom the

Archbishop followed at a considerable distance. All concluded

happily, for both Lloyd and the Archbishop expressed, and no doubt

felt, the pre-eminent claims of Hamilton, and both of them

cordially accepted the office of a Vice-President, to which,

according to the constitution of the Academy, it is the privilege

of the incoming President to nominate.

 

In another chapter I have mentioned as a memorable episode in

astronomical history, that Sir J. Herschel went for a prolonged

sojourn to the Cape of Good Hope, for the purpose of submitting

the southern skies to the same scrutiny with the great telescope

that his father had given to the northern skies. The occasion of

Herschel’s return after the brilliant success of his enterprise,

was celebrated by a banquet. On June 15th, 1838, Hamilton was

assigned the high honour of proposing the health of Herschel.

This banquet is otherwise memorable in Hamilton’s career as being

one of the two occasions in which he was in the company of his

intimate friend De Morgan.

 

In the year 1838 a scheme was adopted by the Royal Irish Academy

for the award of medals to the authors of papers which appeared to

possess exceptionally high merit. At the institution of the medal

two papers were named in competition for the prize. One was

Hamilton’s “Memoir on Algebra, as the Science of Pure Time.” The

other was Macullagh’s paper on the “Laws of Crystalline

Reflection and Refraction.” Hamilton expresses his gratification

that, mainly in consequence of his own exertions, he succeeded in

having the medal awarded to Macullagh rather than to himself.

Indeed, it would almost appear as if Hamilton had procured a

letter from Sir J. Herschel, which indicated the importance of

Macullagh’s memoir in such a way as to decide the issue. It then

became Hamilton’s duty to award the medal from the chair, and to

deliver an address in which he expressed his own sense of

the excellence of Macullagh’s scientific work. It is the

more necessary to allude to these points, because in the whole of

his scientific career it would seem that Macullagh was the only

man with whom Hamilton had ever even an approach to a dispute

about priority. The incident referred to took place in connection

with the discovery of conical refraction, the fame of which

Macullagh made a preposterous attempt to wrest from Hamilton.

This is evidently alluded to in Hamilton’s letter to the Marquis

of Northampton, dated June 28th, 1838, in which we read:—

 

And though some former circumstances prevented me from applying to

the person thus distinguished the sacred name of FRIEND, I had the

pleasure of doing justice…to his high intellectual merits…I

believe he was not only gratified but touched, and may,

perhaps, regard me in future with feelings more like those which I

long to entertain towards him.”

 

Hamilton was in the habit, from time to time, of commencing the

keeping of a journal, but it does not appear to have been

systematically conducted. Whatever difficulties the biographer

may have experienced from its imperfections and irregularities,

seem to be amply compensated for by the practice which Hamilton

had of preserving copies of his letters, and even of comparatively

insignificant memoranda. In fact, the minuteness with which

apparently trivial matters were often noted down appears almost

whimsical. He frequently made a memorandum of the name of the

person who carried a letter to the post, and of the hour in which

it was despatched. On the other hand, the letters which he

received were also carefully preserved in a mighty mass of

manuscripts, with which his study was encumbered, and with which

many other parts of the house were not unfrequently invaded. If a

letter was laid aside for a few hours, it would become lost to

view amid the seething mass of papers, though occasionally, to use

his own expression, it might be seen “eddying” to the surface in

some later disturbance.

 

The great volume of “Lectures on Quaternions” had been issued, and

the author had received the honours which the completion of such a

task would rightfully bring him. The publication of an immortal

work does not, however, necessarily provide the means for paying

the printer’s bill. The printing of so robust a volume was

necessarily costly; and even if all the copies could be sold,

which at the time did not seem very likely, they would hardly have

met the inevitable expenses. The provision of the necessary funds

was, therefore, a matter for consideration. The Board of Trinity

College had already contributed 200 pounds to the printing, but

yet another hundred was required. Even the discoverer of

Quaternions found this a source of much anxiety. However, the

board, urged by the representation of Humphrey Lloyd, now one of

its members, and, as we have already seen, one of Hamilton’s

staunchest friends, relieved him of all liability. We may here

note that, notwithstanding the pension which Hamilton enjoyed in

addition to the salary of his chair, he seems always to have been

in some what straitened circumstances, or, to use his own words in

one of his letters to De Morgan, “Though not an embarrassed man, I

am anything rather than a rich one.” It appears that,

notwithstanding the world-wide fame of Hamilton’s discoveries,

the only profit in a pecuniary sense that he ever obtained from

any of his works was by the sale of what he called his Icosian

Game. Some enterprising publisher, on the urgent representations

of one of Hamilton’s friends in London, bought the copyright of

the Icosian Game for 25 pounds. Even this little speculation

proved unfortunate for the purchaser, as the public could not be

induced to take the necessary interest in the matter.

 

After the completion of his great book, Hamilton appeared for

awhile to permit himself a greater indulgence than usual in

literary relaxations. He had copious correspondence

with his intimate friend, Aubrey de Vere, and there were

multitudes of letters from those troops of friends whom it was

Hamilton’s privilege to possess. He had been greatly affected by

the death of his beloved sister Eliza, a poetess of much taste and

feeling. She left to him her many papers to preserve or to

destroy, but he said it was only after the expiration of four

years of mourning that he took courage to open her pet box of

letters.

 

The religious side of Hamilton’s character is frequently

illustrated in these letters; especially is this brought out in

the correspondence with De Vere, who had seceded to the Church of

Rome. Hamilton writes, August 4,