George Boole
| George Boole | |
|---|---|
Boole in about 1860
|
|
| Born |
2 November 1815 Lincoln, Lincolnshire, England |
| Died | 8 December 1864 (aged 49) Ballintemple, Cork, Ireland |
| Nationality | British |
| Education | Bainbridge's Commercial Academy |
| Era | 19th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western Philosophy |
| School | Mathematical foundations of computing |
| Institutions |
Lincoln Mechanics' Institution Queen's College, Cork |
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Main interests
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Mathematics, Logic, Philosophy of mathematics |
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Notable ideas
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Boolean algebra |
George Boole (/ˈbuːl/; 2 November 1815 – 8 December 1864) was an English mathematician, educator, philosopher and logician. He worked in the fields of differential equations and algebraic logic, and is best known as the author of The Laws of Thought (1854) which contains Boolean algebra. Boolean logic is credited with laying the foundations for the information age. Boole maintained that:
No general method for the solution of questions in the theory of probabilities can be established which does not explicitly recognise, not only the special numerical bases of the science, but also those universal laws of thought which are the basis of all reasoning, and which, whatever they may be as to their essence, are at least mathematical as to their form.
Boole was born in Lincoln, Lincolnshire, England, the son of John Boole Sr (1779–1848), a shoemaker and Mary Ann Joyce. He had a primary school education, and received lessons from his father, but had little further formal and academic teaching. William Brooke, a bookseller in Lincoln, may have helped him with Latin, which he may also have learned at the school of Thomas Bainbridge. He was self-taught in modern languages. At age 16 Boole became the breadwinner for his parents and three younger siblings, taking up a junior teaching position in Doncaster at Heigham's School. He taught briefly in Liverpool.
Boole participated in the Mechanics Institute, in the Greyfriars, Lincoln, which was founded in 1833.Edward Bromhead, who knew John Boole through the institution, helped George Boole with mathematics books and he was given the calculus text of Sylvestre François Lacroix by the Rev. George Stevens Dickson of St Swithin's, Lincoln. Without a teacher, it took him many years to master calculus.
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