William Hamilton

British theoretical biologist (1936–)

Hamilton was educated at the universities of Cambridge and London. He served as a lecturer in genetics at Imperial College, London, from 1964 until 1977 when he moved to America to take up an appointment as professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Michigan. He returned to England in 1984 to serve as a Royal Society Research Professor at Oxford.

In the Origin of Species (1859) Darwin raised a “special difficulty,” which he at first considered unsurmountable. How could natural selection ever lead to the evolution of neuter or sterile insects? Darwin's answer was that selection may be applied to the family, as well as the individual. In a series of papers, beginning in 1964 with The Genetical Theory of Social Behaviour, Hamilton has pursued these implications and opened the way for the emergence of sociobiology. The key concept deployed by Hamilton is that of inclusive fitness, which covers not only an individual's fitness to survive but also the effects of his behavior on the fitness of his kin.

(b Chelsea, London, 1751; d London, 2 Dec 1801). English painter and illustrator. The son of one of Robert Adam's assistants, Hamilton was sent to Rome to be trained as an architectural draughtsman. He studied under Antonio Zucchi (who was later Adam's chief decorative painter), possibly in Rome from 1766 and in London from 1768. At the Royal Academy Schools from 1769, Hamilton developed into a figure painter and exhibited portraits and subject pictures at the Royal Academy from 1774 to 1801. He became ARA in 1784 and RA in 1789.

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Hamilton, William (1788-1856) Scottish philosopher and logician, who from 1836 held the chair of logic and metaphysics at Edinburgh. He held the view that perception gives us a direct or immediate relation with its objects, although one that is in Kantian vein ‘conditioned’ by the medium and the nature of the knowing subject. Of ultimate or unconditioned reality we can know nothing. Like Kant, Hamilton applies this result to show our inability to know the nature of space and time. In logic, Hamilton was famous for the doctrine of the ‘quantification of the predicate’, the subject of acrimonious dispute with De Morgan. His principal work is the four-volume Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic (1859-60). One of J. S. Mill's major works is the Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy (1865).

William Hamilton

This article is about the Jacobite poet. For the poet from Gilbertfield, see William Hamilton (poet).

William Hamilton (1704–1754) was a Scottish poet associated with the Jacobite movement.

He was born at the family seat in Ecclesmachan, West Lothian, Scotland. He began his literary career by contributing verses to Allan Ramsay's Tea Table Miscellany. He joined Charles Edward Stuart in 1745, and celebrated the Battle of Prestonpans in his poem, Gladsmuir. After the Battle of Culloden, he wandered in the Highlands, where he wrote his Soliloquy and later escaped to France. His friends, however, succeeded in obtaining his pardon, and he returned to Scotland. In 1750, on the death of his brother, he succeeded to the family estate, but died not long afterwards, in Lyon, France. He also wrote The Episode of the Thistle and the ballad, The Braes of Yarrow. He died in Lyon.

This article incorporates public domain text from : Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London, J. M. Dent & Sons; New York, E. P. Dutton.

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