Book Launch at Armagh Public Library,
7.30pm, 11th December 2013:
"A Mystic Dream of 4"

Click on image for poster (PDF).

The Armagh Observatory and Armagh Public Library are co-hosting the launch of a new book "A Mystic Dream of 4" by Professor Iggy McGovern, in the Armagh Public Library, 43 Abbey Street, Armagh, at 7.30pm on Wednesday 11th December 2013.

Iggy McGovern is a poet and Emeritus Professor of Physics at Trinity College Dublin. His previous publications include "The King of Suburbia" (Dedalus Press, 2005), and "Safe House" (Dedalus Press, 2010). He also edited the anthology 2012 "Twenty Irish Poets Respond to Science in Twelve Lines" (Dedulas Press, 2012).

"A Mystic Dream of 4" is a sonnet sequence based on the life and times of William Rowan Hamilton (1805-1865), one of the foremost mathematicians of the nineteenth century and the inventor of Quaternions, a number system which extends the complex numbers. Today Hamilton's name is perpetuated in the 'Hamilton' of Hamiltonian Dynamics and, in quantum mechanics, of the Schrodinger Equation. Iggy McGovern's sonnet sequence spans the life and times of this remarkable Irishman, ranging from the aftermath of events at the end of the eighteenth century through the Great Famine and beyond. The sequence consists of 64 sonnets, mainly in the voices of relatives, colleagues and friends of Hamilton, who tell the story of Hamilton's life and reflect the mores of the times.

For further information, please contact the Armagh Public Library by E-mail at adminarmaghpubliclibrary.co.uk or by telephone at 028-3752-3142.

Last Revised: 2013 November 28th