Great Astronomers : William Rowan Hamilton

Sir William Rowan Hamilton (1805-1865) was an Irish physicist, astronomer, and mathematician who made important contributions to mechanics, optics, and algebra.

As a teenager, he mastered parts of Newton's Principia and studied Laplace's celestial mechanics treatise.

When barely 22, Hamilton became a professor of astronomy at University of Dublin, however he was more interested in theoretical rather than practical astronomy.