Abstract
In this chapter I describe the invention of quaternions by Sir William Rowan Hamilton, and their associated complex algebra. However, as so often happens in mathematics, someone-else had already touched upon the subject before Hamilton, as we shall see. If you are interested in the historical development of quaternions, vectors and geometric algebra, then you must read Michael Crowe’s book A History of Vector Analysis (Crowe, A history of vector analysis. Dover Publications, New York, 1994, [1]).
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Vince, J. (2018). Quaternions. In: Imaginary Mathematics for Computer Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94637-5_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94637-5_4
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