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Flaming swords and hermaphrodite monsters - Peter Guthrie Tait and the promotion of quaternions, part II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2016

Chris Pritchard
Chris Pritchard*
Affiliation:
McLaren High School, Callander FK17 8JH
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Extract

In the first part of this paper we traced the early development of quaternions in the hands of Hamilton’s successor, Peter Guthrie Tait, Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh from 1860 to 1900. Tait had neither the intuitive feel for physical concepts that Maxwell possessed nor the entrepreneurial talent of Thomson (Lord Kelvin) and yet he fulfilled a pivotal role in nineteenth century British physics through his correspondence with the former, with whom he went to school, and his collaboration with the latter. Though ambivalent towards quaternions, Maxwell was chivvied by Tait into drafting his 1873 Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism in both Cartesian and quaternion form.

Type
Articles
Information
The Mathematical Gazette , Volume 82 , Issue 494 , July 1998 , pp. 235 - 241
Copyright
Copyright © The Mathematical Association 1998

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References

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