author
Peter Guthrie Tait
1831–1901
A brilliant Scottish physicist and mathematician, he helped shape modern mathematical physics through work on thermodynamics, quaternions, and knot theory. He is also remembered for co-writing the influential textbook Treatise on Natural Philosophy with Lord Kelvin.
1 Audiobook
The unseen universe : or, physical speculations on a future state
by Balfour Stewart, Peter Guthrie Tait
About the author
Born in Dalkeith, Scotland, on April 28, 1831, Peter Guthrie Tait became one of the leading mathematical physicists of the 19th century. He studied at the University of Edinburgh and at Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he graduated with top mathematical honors before beginning an academic career that took him from Cambridge to Belfast and then to the University of Edinburgh.
Tait spent most of his professional life as professor of natural philosophy at Edinburgh, building a reputation for clear, energetic teaching and wide-ranging scientific work. He wrote important books on quaternions and collaborated with Lord Kelvin on Treatise on Natural Philosophy, a major text that helped define physics for a generation of students and researchers.
His interests reached well beyond textbooks. Tait was an early pioneer in thermodynamics and carried out famous studies in knot theory that later became important to topology. He also wrote on subjects as varied as the motion of projectiles and even the physics of golf, showing the same habit throughout his career: using sharp mathematics to explain how the physical world works.