Hamilton was a brilliant child prodigy. When he was five years old he knew Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and before he was ten, he was fluent in Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit, Hindustani, and a host of other eastern languages. His father's hope was that he would eventually land a clerk position with the East India Company. But the young Hamilton had other interests. Science and mathematics fascinated him. As a teenager, Hamilton had absorbed Isaac Newton's Principia and began to develop a keen interest in astronomy. In 1822 he reported a mathematical error in the astronomer Pierre Laplace's Mécanique celeste. Thus was the genius of the impetuous Hamilton brought to the attention of the general scientific community.

Hamilton entered Trinity College in Dublin and so impressed his teachers with his brilliance that before he graduated, he was offered the position of Andrews Professor of Astronomy at the university...