http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2016/10/we_should_celebrate_hamilton_day_a_...
Oct 16 1843 William Rowan Hamilton, one of my all time favorite mathematicians, had his Eureka moment and discovered Quaternions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternion
He apparently wrote this equation on a bridge in Dublin.
.
I have been to Dublin twice but have yet to find this Bridge 😞 But in any case Quaternions turned out to be very useful for rotations and mechanics and are much more connivent than using Euler angles (which suffer from gimbal lock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimbal_lock). ; They are used e.g for space flight and 3D computer graphics (e.g. Quake) and Virtual Realty. Quaternions are common classes in game engines such as Unity. The cross product, which many learn in vector calculus, I think was first defined based on quaternions.
I think this paper from 1985 was the first to describe using Quaternions in 3D computer graphics
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~kiranb/animation/p245-shoemake.pdf
Happy Birthday Quaternion!
Oct 16 1843 William Rowan Hamilton, one of my all time favorite mathematicians, had his Eureka moment and discovered Quaternions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternion
He apparently wrote this equation on a bridge in Dublin.
.
I have been to Dublin twice but have yet to find this Bridge 😞 But in any case Quaternions turned out to be very useful for rotations and mechanics and are much more connivent than using Euler angles (which suffer from gimbal lock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimbal_lock). ; They are used e.g for space flight and 3D computer graphics (e.g. Quake) and Virtual Realty. Quaternions are common classes in game engines such as Unity. The cross product, which many learn in vector calculus, I think was first defined based on quaternions.
I think this paper from 1985 was the first to describe using Quaternions in 3D computer graphics
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~kiranb/animation/p245-shoemake.pdf
Happy Birthday Quaternion!
