William Kingdon Clifford

For other people with the same name, see William Clifford (disambiguation).

William Clifford
FRS
William Kingdon Clifford (1845–1879)
Born4 May 1845 (1845-05-04)
Exeter, Devon, England
Died3 March 1879 (1879-03-04) (aged 33)
Madeira, Portugal
Alma materKing's College London
Trinity College, Cambridge
Known forClifford algebra
Clifford's circle theorems
Clifford's theorem
Clifford torus
Clifford–Klein form
Clifford parallel
Bessel–Clifford function
Dual quaternion
Elements of Dynamic
SpouseLucy Clifford (1875–1879)
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
Philosophy
InstitutionsUniversity College London
Doctoral studentsArthur Black

William Kingdon Clifford FRS (4 May 1845 – 3 March 1879) was a British 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,[1] geometry,[2] and computing.[3] 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.

  1. ^ Doran, Chris; Lasenby, Anthony (2007). Geometric Algebra for Physicists. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. p. 592. ISBN 9780521715959.
  2. ^ Hestenes, David (2011). "Grassmann's legacy" (PDF). From Past to Future: Graßmann's Work in Context. Basel, Germany: Springer. pp. 243–260. doi:10.1007/978-3-0346-0405-5_22. ISBN 978-3-0346-0404-8.
  3. ^ Dorst, Leo (2009). Geometric Algebra for Computer Scientists. Amsterdam: Morgan Kaufmann. p. 664. ISBN 9780123749420.