William Rowan Hamilton

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The Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton. After he died ‘innumerable dinner plates were found buried in the mountainous piles of papers’ in his office.
The mind of the mathematician

What are mathematicians really like? What are the characteristics or traits of personality typical among them? Mathematicians are rarely the heroes of(...)

Minister for Education Norma Foley with Kayleigh Foran of Maths Week and pupils Mariella Bueno (7) and Toni Martin (8) from Scoil Chaoimhín, Marlborough Street, Dublin. Photograph: Mark Stedman
Maths Week Ireland 2021 set to attract more than 250,000 young people

Maths Week Ireland (MWI), which takes place from October 16th-24th, has announced a wide range of events for young and old throughout the island of Ir(...)

Prof Caroline Series: ‘In hyperbolic geometry, you might have a surface that is curved in a different way, shaped like a saddle or a trombone or bugle.’
Hamilton Lecture explores beauty of hyperbolic geometry

Mathematicians often comment on the beauty of their chosen discipline. For the non-mathematicians among us, that can be hard to visualise. But in Prof(...)

The term algorithm comes from the name of Persian mathematician al-Khwarizmi. Photograph courtesy of Prof Irfan Shahid
Complexity: are easily-checked problems also easily solved?

From the name of the Persian polymath al-Khwarizmi, who flourished in the early ninth century, comes the term algorithm. An algorithm is a set of simp(...)

Christmas tree: When divided up by red, blue and gold kites and darts, no two adjacent regions are the same colour.
Christmas trees and the four-colour theorem

When decorating our Christmas trees, we aim to achieve an aesthetic balance. Let’s suppose that there is a plenitude of baubles, but that their colour(...)

William Rowan Hamilton: a role model for good practice in the age of Covid
A Brush with Fame – Frank McNally on William Rowan Hamilton, lockdown exercise, and alliterative bridges of the Royal Canal

On top of being a mathematical genius, William Rowan Hamilton was a role model for good practice in the age of Covid. His epochal discovery of quatern(...)

Prominent mathematics education lecturer Dr Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin (assistant professor at UCD School of Mathematics & Statistics) has been honoured as the recipient of the 2020 Maths Week Ireland Award for her contribution to raising public awareness of maths, pictured with Dr Sheila Donegan, and Eoin Gill, co-founders of Maths Week. Photograph: John Ohle Photography
Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin receives 2020 Maths Week Ireland award

Prominent maths educator Dr Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin has been honoured as this year’s recipient of the Maths Week Ireland Award for raising public aw(...)

Prof Terry Tao’s Hamilton lecture will draw on his childhood fascination with astronomy and distances between planets.
‘Mathematics seems too often to be about learning rules’

Terry Tao is probably the world’s best problem solver in mathematics – the skill that is the essence of this essential creative science. So it’s more(...)

Like John Tyndall, who always underlined the need for science communication and engagement with the public, Tyndall National Institute in UCC has a major programme of science engagement in tandem with advanced research. Above public engagement and outreach officers Dr Caitriona Tyndall and Alida Zauers with Albi Morrish in the Tyndall Atrium adjoining the cleanroom during Culture Night. Photograph: Clare Keogh.
Celebrating the bicentenary of John Tyndall, one of Ireland’s most influential scientists

Kevin O’Sullivan Environment & Science Editor The life of great Irish natural philosopher John Tyndall was summed up adeptly in 2018 when the pu(...)

Hungarian Cornelius Lanczos took up a position at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.
Cornelius Lanczos: Inspired by Hamilton’s quaternions

In May 1954, Cornelius Lanczos took up a position as senior professor in the School of Theoretical Physics at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studie(...)

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