Great Astronomers, Robert Stawell Ball [fox in socks read aloud txt] 📗

Mirza Abul Hassan Khan, paid

a visit to Dublin, and, as a practical exercise in his Oriental

languages, the young scholar addressed to his Excellency a letter

in Persian; a translation of which production is given by Mr.

Graves. When William was fourteen he had the misfortune to lose

his father; and he had lost his mother two years previously. The

boy and his three sisters were kindly provided for by different

members of the family on both sides.

 

It was when William was about fifteen that his attention began to

be turned towards scientific subjects. These were at first

regarded rather as a relaxation from the linguistic studies with

which he had been so largely occupied. On November 22nd, 1820, he

notes in his journal that he had begun Newton’s “Principia”: he

commenced also the study of astronomy by observing eclipses,

occultations, and similar phenomena. When he was sixteen we learn

that he had read conic sections, and that he was engaged in the

study of pendulums. After an attack of illness, he was moved for

change to Dublin, and in May, 1822, we find him reading the

differential calculus and Laplace’s “Mecanique Celeste.” He

criticises an important part of Laplace’s work relative to the

demonstration of the parallelogram of forces. In this same year

appeared the first gushes of those poems which afterwards flowed

in torrents.

 

His somewhat discursive studies had, however, now to give place to

a more definite course of reading in preparation for entrance to

the University of Dublin. The tutor under whom he entered,

Charles Boyton, was himself a distinguished man, but he frankly

told the young William that he could be of little use to him as a

tutor, for his pupil was quite as fit to be his tutor. Eliza

Hamilton, by whom this is recorded, adds, “But there is one thing

which Boyton would promise to be to him, and that was a FRIEND;

and that one proof he would give of this should be that, if ever

he saw William beginning to be UPSET by the sensation he would

excite, and the notice he would attract, he would tell him of it.”

At the beginning of his college career he distanced all his

competitors in every intellectual pursuit. At his first term

examination in the University he was first in Classics and first

in Mathematics, while he received the Chancellor’s prize for a

poem on the Ionian Islands, and another for his poem on Eustace de

St. Pierre.

 

There is abundant testimony that Hamilton had “a heart for

friendship formed.” Among the warmest of the friends whom he made

in these early days was the gifted Maria Edgeworth, who writes to

her sister about “young Mr. Hamilton, an admirable Crichton of

eighteen, a real prodigy of talents, who Dr. Brinkley says may be

a second Newton, quiet, gentle, and simple.” His sister Eliza,

to whom he was affectionately attached, writes to him in 1824:—

 

“I had been drawing pictures of you in my mind in your study at

Cumberland Street with ‘Xenophon,’ &c., on the table, and you,

with your most awfully sublime face of thought, now sitting down,

and now walking about, at times rubbing your hands with an air of

satisfaction, and at times bursting forth into some very heroical

strain of poetry in an unknown language, and in your own internal

solemn ventriloquist-like voice, when you address yourself to the

silence and solitude of your own room, and indeed, at times, even

when your mysterious poetical addresses are not quite unheard.”

 

This letter is quoted because it refers to a circumstance which

all who ever met with Hamilton, even in his latest years, will

remember. He was endowed with two distinct voices, one a high

treble, the other a deep bass, and he alternately employed these

voices not only in ordinary conversation, but when he was

delivering an address on the profundities of Quaternions to the

Royal Irish Academy, or on similar occasions. His friends had

long grown so familiar with this peculiarity that they were

sometimes rather surprised to find how ludicrous it appeared to

strangers.

 

Hamilton was fortunate in finding, while still at a very early

age, a career open before him which was worthy of his talents.

He had not ceased to be an undergraduate before he was called to

fill an illustrious chair in his university. The circumstances

are briefly as follows.

 

We have already mentioned that, in 1826, Brinkley was appointed

Bishop of Cloyne, and the professorship of astronomy thereupon

became vacant. Such was Hamilton’s conspicuous eminence that,

notwithstanding he was still an undergraduate, and had only just

completed his twenty-first year, he was immediately thought of as

a suitable successor to the chair. Indeed, so remarkable were his

talents in almost every direction that had the vacancy been in the

professorship of classics or of mathematics, of English literature

or of metaphysics, of modern or of Oriental languages, it seems

difficult to suppose that he would not have occurred to every one

as a possible successor. The chief ground, however, on which the

friends of Hamilton urged his appointment was the earnest of

original power which he had already shown in a research on the

theory of Systems of Rays. This profound work created a new

branch of optics, and led a few years later to a superb discovery,

by which the fame of its author became world-wide.

 

At first Hamilton thought it would be presumption for him to apply

for so exalted a position; he accordingly retired to the country,

and resumed his studies for his degree. Other eminent candidates

came forward, among them some from Cambridge, and a few of the

Fellows from Trinity College, Dublin, also sent in their

claims. It was not until Hamilton received an urgent letter from

his tutor Boyton, in which he was assured of the favourable

disposition of the Board towards his candidature, that he

consented to come forward, and on June 16th, 1827, he was

unanimously chosen to succeed the Bishop of Cloyne as Professor of

Astronomy in the University. The appointment met with almost

universal approval. It should, however, be noted that Brinkley,

whom Hamilton succeeded, did not concur in the general sentiment.

No one could have formed a higher opinion than he had done of

Hamilton’s transcendent powers; indeed, it was on that very

ground that he seemed to view the appointment with disapprobation.

He considered that it would have been wiser for Hamilton to have

obtained a Fellowship, in which capacity he would have been able

to exercise a greater freedom in his choice of intellectual

pursuits. The bishop seems to have thought, and not without

reason, that Hamilton’s genius would rather recoil from much of

the routine work of an astronomical establishment. Now that

Hamilton’s whole life is before us, it is easy to see that the

bishop was entirely wrong. It is quite true that Hamilton never

became a skilled astronomical observer; but the seclusion of the

observatory was eminently favourable to those gigantic labours to

which his life was devoted, and which have shed so much lustre,

not only on Hamilton himself, but also on his University and his

country.

 

In his early years at Dunsink, Hamilton did make some attempts at

a practical use of the telescopes, but he possessed no natural

aptitude for such work, while exposure which it involved seems

to have acted injuriously on his health. He, therefore,

gradually allowed his attention to be devoted to those

mathematical researches in which he had already given such promise

of distinction. Although it was in pure mathematics that he

ultimately won his greatest fame, yet he always maintained and

maintained with justice, that he had ample claims to

the title of an astronomer. In his later years he set forth this

position himself in a rather striking manner. De Morgan had

written commending to Hamilton’s notice Grant’s “History of

Physical Astronomy.” After becoming acquainted with the book,

Hamilton writes to his friend as follows:—

 

“The book is very valuable, and very creditable to its composer.

But your humble servant may be pardoned if he finds himself

somewhat amused at the title, `History of Physical Astronomy

from the Earliest Ages to the Middle of the Nineteenth Century,’

when he fails to observe any notice of the discoveries of Sir W.

R. Hamilton in the theory of the ‘Dynamics of the Heavens.’”

 

The intimacy between the two correspondents will account for the

tone of this letter; and, indeed, Hamilton supplies in the

lines which follow ample grounds for his complaint. He tells how

Jacobi spoke of him in Manchester in 1842 as “le Lagrange de votre

pays,” and how Donkin had said that, “The Analytical Theory of

Dynamics as it exists at present is due mainly to the labours of

La Grange Poisson, Sir W. R. Hamilton, and Jacobi, whose

researches on this subject present a series of discoveries hardly

paralleled for their elegance and importance in any other branch

of mathematics.” In the same letter Hamilton also alludes to the

success which had attended the applications of his methods in

other hands than his own to the elucidation of the difficult

subject of Planetary Perturbations. Even had his contributions to

science amounted to no more than these discoveries, his tenure of

the chair would have been an illustrious one. It happens,

however, that in the gigantic mass of his intellectual work these

researches, though intrinsically of such importance, assume what

might almost be described as a relative insignificance.

 

The most famous achievement of Hamilton’s earlier years at the

observatory was the discovery of conical refraction. This was one

of those rare events in the history of science, in which a

sagacious calculation has predicted a result of an almost

startling character, subsequently confirmed by observation. At

once this conferred on the young professor a world-wide renown.

Indeed, though he was still only twenty-seven, he had already

lived through an amount of intellectual activity which would have

been remarkable for a man of threescore and ten.

 

Simultaneously with his growth in fame came the growth of his

several friendships. There were, in the first place, his

scientific friendships with Herschel, Robinson, and many others

with whom he had copious correspondence. In the excellent

biography to which I have referred, Hamilton’s correspondence with

Coleridge may be read, as can also the letters to his lady

correspondents, among them being Maria Edgeworth, Lady Dunraven,

and Lady Campbell. Many of these sheets relate to literary

matters, but they are largely intermingled With genial pleasantry,

and serve at all events to show the affection and esteem with

which he was regarded by all who had the privilege of knowing him.

There are also the letters to the sisters whom he adored, letters

brimming over with such exalted sentiment, that most ordinary

sisters would be tempted to receive them with a smile in

the excessively improbable event of their still more ordinary

brothers attempting to pen such effusions. There are also

indications of letters to and from other young ladies who from

time to time were the objects of Hamilton’s tender admiration. We

use the plural advisedly, for, as Mr. Graves has set forth,

Hamilton’s love affairs pursued a rather troubled course. The

attention which he lavished on one or two fair ones was not

reciprocated, and even the intense charms of mathematical

discovery could not assuage the pangs which the disappointed

lover experienced. At last he reached the haven of matrimony in

1833, when he was married to Miss Bayly. Of his married life

Hamilton said, many years later to De Morgan, that it was as

happy as he expected, and happier than he deserved. He had two

sons, William and Archibald, and one daughter, Helen, who became

the wife of Archdeacon O’Regan.

 

[PLATE: SIR W. ROWAN HAMILTON.]

 

The most remarkable of Hamilton’s friendships in