[kens]

For a summary of William Rowan Hamilton's life (including the bridge story), see this amazingly clever video based on the song from Hamilton: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZXHoWwBcDc

[chadcmulligan]

There's also a great book "A History of Vector Analysis: The Evolution of the Idea of a Vectorial System" by Crowe which covers vectors from Complex numbers to Gibbs vectors and includes Hamilton and the competitor at the time Grassman Algebra, both the basis for geometric algebra.

Its one of the only maths history books I couldn't put down.