|Peter Guthrie Tait| Birthplace: Dalkeith, Midlothian, Scotland
Location of death: Edinburgh, Scotland Cause of death:
unspecified Race or Ethnicity: White Occupation: Physicist,
Mathematician Executive summary: Treatise on Quaternions
Scottish physicist and mathematician, born at Dalkeith on the
28th of April 1831. After attending the Academy at Edinburgh and
spending a session at the University, he went up to Cambridge as
a member of Peterhouse, and graduated as senior wrangler and
first Smith's prizeman in 1852. As a fellow and lecturer of his
college he remained in Cambridge for two years longer, and then
left to take up the professorship of mathematics at Queen's
College, Belfast. There he made the acquaintance of Thomas
Andrews, whom he joined in researches on the density of ozone
and the action of the electric discharge on oxygen and other
gases, and by whom he was introduced to Sir W. R. Hamilton and
quaternions. In 1860 he was chosen to succeed his old master, J.
D. Forbes, as professor of natural ph