William Kingdon Clifford

William Kingdon Clifford (4 May 1845 - 3 March 1879) was an English mathematician and philosopher. Building on the work of Hermann Grassmann, he introduced what is now termed geometric algebra, a special case of the Clifford algebra named in his honour. The operations of geometric algebra have the effect of mirroring, rotating, translating, and mapping the geometric objects that are being modelled to new positions. Clifford algebras in general and geometric algebra in particular have been of ever increasing importance to mathematical physics, geometry, and computing. Clifford was the first to suggest that gravitation might be a manifestation of an underlying geometry. In his philosophical writings he coined the expression mind-stuff. Born at Exeter, William Clifford showed great promise at school. He went on to King's College London (at age 15) and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was elected fellow in 1868, after being second wrangler in 1867 and second Smith's prizeman. Being second was a fate he shared with others who became famous scientists, including William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) and James Clerk Maxwell. In 1870, he was part of an expedition to Italy to observe the solar eclipse of 22 December 1870. During that voyage he survived a shipwreck along the Sicilian coast. In 1871, he was appointed professor of mathematics and mechanics at University College London, and in 1874 became a fellow of the Royal Society. He was also a member of the London Mathematical Society and the Metaphysical Society. Clifford married Lucy Lane on 7 April 1875, with whom he had two children. Clifford enjoyed entertaining children and wrote a collection of fairy stories, The Little People. In 1876, Clifford suffered a breakdown, probably brought on by overwork. He taught and administered by day, and wrote by night. A half-year holiday in Algeria and Spain allowed him to resume his duties for 18 months, after which he collapsed again. He went to the island of Madeira to recover, but died there of tuberculosis after a few months, leaving a widow with two children.

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In mathematics, a versor is a quaternion of norm one (a unit quaternion). Each versor has the form where the r2 = −1 condition means that r is a unit-length vector quaternion (or that the first component of r is zero, and the last three components of r are a unit vector in 3 dimensions). The corresponding 3-dimensional rotation has the angle 2a about the axis r in axis–angle representation. In case a = π/2 (a right angle), then , and the resulting unit vector is termed a right versor.

Biquaternion

In abstract algebra, the biquaternions are the numbers w + x i + y j + z k, where w, x, y, and z are complex numbers, or variants thereof, and the elements of {1, i, j, k} multiply as in the quaternion group and commute with their coefficients. There are three types of biquaternions corresponding to complex numbers and the variations thereof: Biquaternions when the coefficients are complex numbers. Split-biquaternions when the coefficients are split-complex numbers. Dual quaternions when the coefficients are dual numbers.

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Geometry (; ) is a branch of mathematics concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. Geometry is, along with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is called a geometer. Until the 19th century, geometry was almost exclusively devoted to Euclidean geometry, which includes the notions of point, line, plane, distance, angle, surface, and curve, as fundamental concepts.