Frederick Methvan Whyte
Frederick Methvan Whyte (March 2, 1865 – 1941 Athens) was a mechanical engineer of Dutch background who worked for the New York Central in the United States. He is most widely known as the person who developed Whyte notation to describe the different wheel arrangements of steam locomotives in 1900.
History of mathematical notation
Matrix notation would be more fully developed by Arthur Cayley in his three papers, on subjects which had been suggested by reading the Mécanique analytique of Lagrange and some of the works of Laplace. Cayley defined matrix multiplication and matrix inverses. Cayley used a single letter to denote a matrix, thus treating a matrix as an aggregate object. He also realized the connection between matrices and determinants, and wrote ""There would be many things to say about this theory of matrices which should, it seems to me, precede the theory of determinants"".
William Rowan Hamilton would introduce the nabla symbol for vector differentials. This was previously used by Hamilton as a general-purpose operator sign. Hamilton reformulated Newtonian mechanics, now called Hamiltonian mechanics. This work has proven central to the modern study of classical field theories such as electromagnetism. This was also important to the development of quantum mechanics. In mathematics, he is perhaps best known as the inventor of quaternion notation and biquaternions. Hamilton also introduced the word "tensor" in 1846. James Cockle would develop the tessarines and, in 1849, coquaternions. In 1848, James Joseph Sylvester introduced into matrix algebra the term matrix.