George Boole

George Boole

George Boole (1815 - 1864)

He was a British mathematician who came from family fallen on hard times. He had to dismiss the idea of ??becoming a preacher as he was forced to support their parents. At sixteen he taught mathematics at a private school and later founded his own school. Years after the publication of his first letter, he could enter in Cambridge, but he rejected the offer again because of his duties to his family. In 1849 he was appointed as professor of mathematics at Queens College, Cork, where he remained for the rest of his life (Boole, 1857).

Boole's great discovery was to apply a series of logical operations and symbols to make these symbols and operations carefully by choice having the same logical structure as the conventional algebra. In Boolean algebra, the symbols could be manipulated according to fixed rules that would produce logical results. Research was published by him in 1854 on the Laws of Thought, a book that was full of symbolic logic and algebra. The influence of the mathematical logic of modern mathematics have evolved slowly, if at first seemed no more than an intricate wordplay. Later it was found most useful, and even absolutely essential to get the mathematical logic. Boole was married at the age of forty years and had five daughters, who never saw teenagers (Jeremy, 2007).

Boole was an intelligent child, and his first interest was into languages, it was because of his ability to completely dominate the Latin. Although he had not studied for it, he began devoting himself to teaching for 16 years being an assistant professor at a college. He also thought to perform the religious career, but in 1835 he decided to open his own school. That was when he began to study mathematics on his own, studying the works of Laplace and Lagrange. He headed toward the Algebra studies by publishing an application of algebraic methods for solving differential equations for which he received the Medal of the Royal London Mathematical Society. In 1849 he was appointed professor of mathematics at Queens College, where he held teaching the rest of his life.

In 1854 he published his studies on the mathematical theories of logic and probability. Boolean logic reduced to a simple algebra, giving birth to what is known as Boolean algebra, which influenced the development of computing. He is famous as a British mathematician who was self-taught, and founded his own school of elementary education. He published several articles on the combination of algebra and calculus, and developed an algebra itself, which applied to logic. The purpose of which is arguing that this should be a branch of mathematics, rather than philosophy. He was the initiator of symbolic logic, which represents the processes of reasoning by mathematical symbols. His work impressed his colleagues at the time, which in 1849 earned him the post of professor at Queens College Cork, which was offered even though he had no college degree (James, 2000). 

In 1857 he was appointed member of the Royal ...