William Rowan Hamilton

William Rowan Hamilton is a mathematician who had the insight of quaternions. Quaternions are useful in such calculations as satellite slews because they avoid the phenomena of gimbal lock. The moment occurred at Broom Bridge in Dublin, Ireland on October 16, 1843. There is a plaque the memorializes the moment. It reads:

Here as he walked by
on the 16th of October 1843
Sir William Rowan Hamilton
in a flash of genius discovered
the fundamental formula for
quaternion multiplication
i² = j² = k² = ijk = −1
& cut it on a stone of this bridge.

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