William Edwin Hamilton
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William Edwin Hamilton (10 May 1834 – 17 March 1902) was the elder son of the Irish mathematician
Sir William Rowan Hamilton Sir William Rowan Hamilton LL.D, DCL, 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 Irela ...
and Lady Helen Maria Hamilton Bayly.


Early life in Ireland

William Edwin Hamilton was born at
Dunsink Observatory The Dunsink Observatory is an astronomical observatory established in 1785 in the townland of Dunsink in the outskirts of the city of Dublin, Ireland.Alexander Thom''Irish Almanac and Official Directory''7th ed., 1850 p. 258. Retrieved: 2011-02-2 ...
, in the civil parish of
Castleknock Castleknock () is an affluent suburb located west of the centre of Dublin city, Ireland. It is centered on the village of the same name in Fingal. In addition to the suburb, the name "Castleknock" also refers to older units of land division: ...
,
Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...
. He graduated in 1857 from
Trinity College Dublin , name_Latin = Collegium Sanctae et Individuae Trinitatis Reginae Elizabethae juxta Dublin , motto = ''Perpetuis futuris temporibus duraturam'' (Latin) , motto_lang = la , motto_English = It will last i ...
and became a civil engineer, working for some years as a surveyor for railway purposes. In 1862 Hamilton left for
Nicaragua Nicaragua (; ), officially the Republic of Nicaragua (), is the largest country in Central America, bordered by Honduras to the north, the Caribbean to the east, Costa Rica to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Managua is the cou ...
with his aunt Sydney Hamilton on a venture scheme anticipating a canal project across the
Isthmus of Darien An isthmus (; ; ) is a narrow piece of land connecting two larger areas across an expanse of water by which they are otherwise separated. A tombolo is an isthmus that consists of a spit or bar, and a strait is the sea counterpart of an isthmus ...
. Realizing the futility of this venture, and not used to the diet and the climate, in 1864 he returned to the Observatory and lived with his parents until his father's death in 1865. In 1843 Hamilton's father had discovered the
quaternions In mathematics, the quaternion number system extends the complex numbers. Quaternions were first described by the Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton in 1843 and applied to mechanics in three-dimensional space. Hamilton defined a quater ...
, a four-dimensional number system that extends the
complex numbers In mathematics, a complex number is an element of a number system that extends the real numbers with a specific element denoted , called the imaginary unit and satisfying the equation i^= -1; every complex number can be expressed in the form a ...
, and he had published
Lectures on Quaternions
' in 1853. From 1858 until his death in 1865 he worked on a second book, ''Elements of Quaternions'', which was nearly finished when he died. Hamilton's brother Archibald Henry Hamilton, a clergyman and executor of his father’s estate, being too much engaged in his clerical duties to undertake the task, asked Hamilton to bring the ''Elements of Quaternions'' to publication. Hamilton published the manuscript as his father had left it, removing "a few typographical errors" and adding a short preface in which he wrote: "Shortly before my father’s death I had several conversations with him on the subject of the ''Elements''. In these he spoke of anticipated applications of quaternions to electricity, and to all questions in which the idea of polarity is involved — applications which he never in his own lifetime expected to be able to fully develop, bows to be reserved for the hands of another Ulysses."


Later life in Canada

In 1872, Hamilton emigrated to Canada where he became a journalist and an editor, working in Bracebridge, Ontario at E.F. Stephenson's ''Free Grant Gazette'', and as a Government Immigration Agent. In his introduction to ''Guidebook and Atlas'' of Muskoka, Hamilton outlines the history of the region. The name he traces to Muska Ukee, or Musquakie, a leader of the Chippewa of Lakes
Huron Huron may refer to: People * Wyandot people (or Wendat), indigenous to North America * Wyandot language, spoken by them * Huron-Wendat Nation, a Huron-Wendat First Nation with a community in Wendake, Quebec * Nottawaseppi Huron Band of Potawatomi ...
and Simcoe. He passes over the surveying by
Henry Bayfield Admiral Henry Wolsey Bayfield (21 January 1795 – 10 February 1885) was a British naval officer and surveyor. Early life and career Bayfield was born in Kingston-upon-Hull, to John Wolsey Bayfield and Eliza Petit. His family was an ancie ...
to the Free Grants Act of 1868, notes the efforts to organize as a county in Ontario, and the $2000 bonus and tax deferral given to Beardmore Brothers tannery to locate in Bracebridge. He promotes tourism to Muskoka and celebrates the local success. However rocky soil hindered agriculture, and the period was recalled in ''Hardscrabble: the High Cost of Free Land''. The ''Guidebook and Atlas'' was "the last concerted effort to draw settlers to Muskoka." In ''Hardscrabble'', Williams writes: "Eccentric was W.E. Hamilton, the scholar and newspaperman, with his pet
snowy owl The snowy owl (''Bubo scandiacus''), also known as the polar owl, the white owl and the Arctic owl, is a large, white owl of the true owl family. Snowy owls are native to the Arctic regions of both North America and the Palearctic, breeding mos ...
and birch bark accessories, holed up with his books above the ''Free Grant Gazette''." In 1880 Hamilton finally settled in Chatham, where he was for some time editor of the ''Chatham Planet''. After having lost his editorship, in 1885 he started his own ''Market Guide'', "a four-page, pink paper tabloid, ... in which he sold sufficient advertising to eke out a starved existence." For several years in the late 1880s Hamilton was an alcoholic, but according to Macfarlane he took
Leslie Keeley Leslie Enraught Keeley (June 10, 1836 – February 21, 1900) was an American physician, originator of the Keeley Cure. Biography He was born in Potsdam, New York, on June 10, 1836. Keeley graduated at the Rush Medical College, Chicago, in 1863, ...
's
Gold Cure The Keeley Institute, known for its Keeley Cure or Gold Cure, was a commercial medical operation that offered treatment to alcoholics from 1879 to 1965. Though at one time there were more than 200 branches in the United States and Europe, the ori ...
. He was cured, and became in his last years a "kindly good-natured old Irishman", known for his 'amazing erudition.'Wayman (1987) pp. 305, 308


Books

* 1865: ''Scenes in the life of a planter's daughter, etc.''. George Herbert, Dublin * 1884: ''Muskoka sketch''. Times Printing Co., Dresden, Ontario * 1895: ''Peeps at my Life'', 2nd edition. Banner Printing Company, Chatham, Ontario


References


Sources

* Hamilton, W.E. (1865),
Scenes from the Life of a Planter's Daughter
' Dublin: George Herbert * Hamilton, W.R. (au), Hamilton, W.E. (ed) (1866),
Elements of Quaternions
' London: Longmans, Green, & Co * Hamilton, W.E. (1878), Muskoka and Parry Sound. In: Kirkwood, A., Murphy, J.J.,
The Underdeveloped Lands in Northern & Western Ontario
' Toronto: Hunter, Rose & Co., pp. 56–86 * Hamilton, W.E. (1879), Muskoka and Parry Sound Districts. In: Rogers, J., Penson, S.,
Guide book & Atlas of Muskoka and Parry Sound Districts
' Toronto: H.R. Page & Co, pp. 1–35 * Hamilton, W.E. (1884),
Muskoka Sketch
' Dresden, Ontario: Times Printing Co * Graves, R.P. (1889),
Life of Sir William Rowan Hamilton
' Dublin: Hodges, Figgis and Co * Hamilton, W.E. (1895),
Peeps at my life
' Chatham: Banner Printing Company * Macfarlane, A. (1902)
W.E. Hamilton
''Science'' 15 (389): 950 * Hankins, T.L. (1980),
Sir William Rowan Hamilton
' Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press * Wayman, P.A. (1987),
Dunsink Observatory, 1785-1985 : a Bicentennial History
' Dublin: DIAS and the Royal Dublin Society * Wayman, P.A. (1999)
Peeps at William Edwin Hamilton
''Irish Astronomical Journal'', 26 (1): 69-72 * Williams, D.E. (2013),
Hardscrabble: The High Cost of Free Land
' Toronto: Dundurn Press {{DEFAULTSORT:Hamilton, William Edwin William Rowan Hamilton Irish journalists 1834 births 1902 deaths People from Castleknock Historical treatment of quaternions Writers from Ontario Irish expatriates in Nicaragua Irish emigrants to Canada (before 1923)