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Peter Guthrie Tait : new insights into aspects of his life and work : and associated topics in the history of mathematics

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ElizabethLewisPhDThesis.pdf (113.3Mb)
Date
26/06/2015
Author
Lewis, Elizabeth Faith
Supervisor
Roney-Dougal, Colva Mary
Robertson, E. F.
O'Connor, John J. (John Joseph)
Keywords
Peter Guthrie Tait
C.-V. Mourey
Bishop Charles Hughes Terrot
Balfour Stewart
James Matthews Duncan
James Clerk Maxwell
William Thomson (Lord Kelvin)
John Tyndall, Belfast address
John Warren
Cargill Gilston Knott
Joseph Gergonne
Augustus de Morgan
Sir William Rowan Hamilton
Adrien-Quentin Buée
The unseen universe
Tait's scrapbook
Tait–Maxwell school-book
Tait's pocket notebook
Manuscripts library, Trinity College, Dublin
Edinburgh Academy
University of Edinburgh
Queen's College, Belfast
Royal Society of Edinburgh
Peterhouse, University of Cambridge
Tait memorial movement
Tait and Ronaldson family history (genealogy)
Science versus religion
Materialism versus Christianity
Nineteenth century (Victorian) mathematics and natural philosophy
Tait's statistical (demographic) models
Tait's laws
Fecundity, Fertility, Sterility and Allied Topics
Discovery of quaternions
Academical club prize competition
Tait poetry
Franco–Prussian War poetry
Argand diagram
Geometrical representation of complex numbers
Fundamental theorem of algebra
History of mathematics
La Vraie Théorie des quantités négatives et des quantités prétendues imaginaires
Armand de Maizière
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Abstract
In this thesis I present new insights into aspects of Peter Guthrie Tait’s life and work, derived principally from largely-unexplored primary source material: Tait’s scrapbook, the Tait–Maxwell school-book and Tait’s pocket notebook. By way of associated historical insights, I also come to discuss the innovative and far-reaching mathematics of the elusive Frenchman, C.-V. Mourey. P. G. Tait (1831–1901) F.R.S.E., Professor of Mathematics at the Queen’s College, Belfast (1854–1860) and of Natural Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh (1860–1901), was one of the leading physicists and mathematicians in Europe in the nineteenth century. His expertise encompassed the breadth of physical science and mathematics. However, since the nineteenth century he has been unfortunately overlooked—overshadowed, perhaps, by the brilliance of his personal friends, James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879), Sir William Rowan Hamilton (1805–1865) and William Thomson (1824–1907), later Lord Kelvin. Here I present the results of extensive research into the Tait family history. I explore the spiritual aspect of Tait’s life in connection with The Unseen Universe (1875) which Tait co-authored with Balfour Stewart (1828–1887). I also reveal Tait’s surprising involvement in statistics and give an account of his introduction to complex numbers, as a schoolboy at the Edinburgh Academy. A highlight of the thesis is a re-evaluation of C.-V. Mourey’s 1828 work, La Vraie Théorie des quantités négatives et des quantités prétendues imaginaires, which I consider from the perspective of algebraic reform. The thesis also contains: (i) a transcription of an unpublished paper by Hamilton on the fundamental theorem of algebra which was inspired by Mourey and (ii) new biographical information on Mourey.
Type
Thesis, PhD Doctor of Philosophy
Collections
  • Mathematics & Statistics Theses
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/6330

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