There is no way to guarantee in advance what pure mathemati… - William Rowan Hamilton

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There is no way to guarantee in advance what pure mathematics will later find application. We can only let the process of curiosity and abstraction take place, let mathematicians obsessively take results to their logical extremes, leaving relevance far behind, and wait to see which topics turn out to be extremely useful. If not, when the challenges of the future arrive, we won’t have the right piece of seemingly pointless mathematics to hand.

William Rowan Hamilton

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About William Rowan Hamilton

Sir William Rowan Hamilton (4 August 1805 – 2 September 1865) was an Irish physicist, astronomer, and mathematician, who made important contributions to classical mechanics, optics, and algebra. His studies of mechanical and optical systems led him to discover new mathematical concepts and techniques. His greatest contribution is perhaps the reformulation of Newtonian mechanics, now called Hamiltonian mechanics. This work has proven central to the modern study of classical field theories such as electromagnetism, and to the development of quantum mechanics. In mathematics, he is perhaps best known for his discovery of quaternions.

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Alternative Names: Sir William Rowan Hamilton • Hamilton Mathematics Institute • Hamilton

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Originators like William Rowan Hamilton:

Carl Friedrich Gauss Isaac Barrow Hermann Weyl John Wallis James Clerk Maxwell

Additional quotes by William Rowan Hamilton

There is no mathematical substitute for philosophy.

We will always have STEM with us. Some things will drop out of the public eye and will go away, but there will always be science, engineering and technology. And there will always, always be mathematics. Everything is physics and math.

I used to fear I was not made for mathematics and would look for people to tell me I was on the right track. You need to develop a personal conviction that you are a mathematician, and that what you are doing makes sense.

There is no way to guarantee in advance what pure mathematics will later find application. We can only let the process of curiosity and abstraction t… - William Rowan Hamilton

About William Rowan Hamilton

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Additional quotes by William Rowan Hamilton