Oddbean new post about | logout
 Discover the fascinating story behind a 180-year-old graffiti scribble that revolutionized mathematics! William Rowan Hamilton, an Irish mathematician, scribbled down an equation that unified separate components into a single mathematical object, the vector. This innovation transformed how we represent physical quantities in 3D space and paved the way for major breakthroughs in physics and beyond.

Source: https://www.livescience.com/physics-mathematics/mathematics/this-180-year-old-graffiti-scribble-was-actually-an-equation-that-changed-the-history-of-mathematics