Alexander MacAulay

Alexander McAulay
Born 9 December 1863(1863-12-09)
Died 6 July 1931(1931-07-06) (aged 67)
Fields Mathematician and physicist
Institutions University of Tasmania
University of Melbourne
Alma mater University of Cambridge
University of Manchester
Doctoral advisor Ernest Rutherford
Doctoral students Neville Ronsley Parsons
Known for Work on quaternions
Notes
He is the brother of Francis Macaulay.

Alexander McAulay (1863 - 1931) was an explorer of Clifford biquaternion theory and was the first professor of mathematics and physics at the University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania. McAulay was born 9 December 1863 and attended Kingswood School in Bath and Caius College, Cambridge, taking his degree in 1886.[1] He studied quaternions intensively at Cambridge. Departing for Australia, he lectured at Ormond College, University of Melbourne from 1893 to 1895. He was an advocate of quaternion calculus for modeling physical relations.[2]

Peter Guthrie Tait praised McAulay's book Utility of Quaternions in Physics (1893) in these terms:

Here, at last, we exclaim, is a man who has caught the full spirit of the quaternion system: the real aestus, the awen of the Welsh Bards, the divinus afflatus that transports the poet beyond the limits of sublunary things! Intuitively recognizing its power, he snatches up the magnificent weapon which Hamilton tenders us all, and at once dashes off to the jungle on the quest of big game.[3]

McAulay took up the position of Professor of Physics in Tasmania from 1896 until 1929, as which time his son Alexander Leicester McAulay took over the position for the next thirty years.

McAulay is also remembered for work with hypercomplex numbers, in particular the split-biquaternions which William Kingdon Clifford had noted. In 1898 McAulay published, through Cambridge University Press, his Octonions: a Development of Clifford's Biquaternions.

McAulay died 6 July 1931. His brother Francis Macaulay, who stayed in England, also contributed to ring theory. The University of Tasmania has commemorated the McAulays' contributions in Winter Public Lectures.[4]

References

  1. ^ McAulay, Alexander in Venn, J. & J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses, Cambridge University Press, 10 vols, 1922–1958.
  2. ^ M.J. Crowe (1967) A History of Vector Analysis, U. Notre Dame Press. Chapter 6 details McAulay's four contributions in 1893 and 94 to the debate on vectors and quaternions.
  3. ^ PG Tait (1893) Nature 28 December
  4. ^ University of Tasmania: McAulay Lectures

External links