Ramble, Part 47: The Fourfold Way

We have seen how the study of geometry changed in the course of the nineteenth century. Algebra, starting from a very different point, followed a very different path, but ultimately arrived at a similar place. The groundwork for the first step on that path had been laid by two significant events, both previously described: the representation of the complex numbers as points on the plane, at the hands of Wessel, Argand, and Gauss, and the axiomatization of algebra by George Peacock. Enter William Rowan Hamilton....

( Quaternions )

Ramble Contents