George Boole (; 2 November 1815 – 8 December 1864) was a largely self-taught English mathematician, philosopher, and logician, most of whose short career was spent as the first professor of mathematics at Queen's College, Cork in Ireland.
(ed) (2019) George Boole's Lincoln, 1815–49.
He taught briefly in Liverpool. Boole participated in the Lincoln Mechanics' Institute, in the Greyfriars, Lincoln, which was founded in 1833.
The first of these was from 1835 when Charles Anderson-Pelham, 1st Earl of Yarborough gave a bust of Newton to the Mechanics' Institute in Lincoln.
He associated also with the Chartist Thomas Cooper, whose wife was a relation. From 1838 onwards, Boole was making contacts with sympathetic British academic mathematicians and reading more widely.
In 1840, he moved back to Lincoln, where he ran a boarding school.
from the University of Dublin and the University of Oxford. ==Works== Boole's first published paper was "Researches in the theory of analytical transformations, with a special application to the reduction of the general equation of the second order", printed in the Cambridge Mathematical Journal in February 1840 (Volume 2, No.
His works are in about 50 articles and a few separate publications. In 1841, Boole published an influential paper in early invariant theory.
Larken in a campaign to reduce prostitution. ==Honours and awards== In 1844, Boole's paper "On a General Method in Analysis" won the first gold prize for mathematics awarded by the Royal Society.
He received a medal from the Royal Society for his memoir of 1844, "On a General Method in Analysis".
With Edmund Larken and others he set up a building society in 1847.
In 1847, Boole published The Mathematical Analysis of Logic, the first of his works on symbolic logic. ===Differential equations=== Boole completed two systematic treatises on mathematical subjects during his lifetime.
Generalisations of this identity play an important role in the theory of the Hilbert transform. ===Symbolic logic=== In 1847, Boole published the pamphlet Mathematical Analysis of Logic.
The second justified and celebrated in 1847 the outcome of the successful campaign for early closing in Lincoln, headed by Alexander Leslie-Melville, of Branston Hall.
He studied algebra in the form of symbolic methods, as far as these were understood at the time, and began to publish research papers. ==Professor at Cork== Boole's status as a mathematician was recognised by his appointment in 1849 as the first professor of mathematics at Queen's College, Cork (now University College Cork (UCC)) in Ireland.
He met his future wife, Mary Everest, there in 1850 while she was visiting her uncle John Ryall who was professor of Greek.
The Claims of Science was given in 1851 at Queen's College, Cork.
They married some years later in 1855.
He was awarded the Keith Medal by the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1855 and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1857.
The Social Aspect of Intellectual Culture was also given in Cork, in 1855 to the Cuvierian Society. Though his biographer Des MacHale describes Boole as an "agnostic deist", Boole read a wide variety of Christian theology.
He was awarded the Keith Medal by the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1855 and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1857.
The Treatise on Differential Equations appeared in 1859, and was followed, the next year, by a Treatise on the Calculus of Finite Differences, a sequel to the former work. ===Analysis=== In 1857, Boole published the treatise "On the Comparison of Transcendent, with Certain Applications to the Theory of Definite Integrals", in which he studied the sum of residues of a rational function.
The Treatise on Differential Equations appeared in 1859, and was followed, the next year, by a Treatise on the Calculus of Finite Differences, a sequel to the former work. ===Analysis=== In 1857, Boole published the treatise "On the Comparison of Transcendent, with Certain Applications to the Theory of Definite Integrals", in which he studied the sum of residues of a rational function.
Boole and Jevons struggled over just this issue in 1863, in the form of the correct evaluation of x + x.
George Boole (; 2 November 1815 – 8 December 1864) was a largely self-taught English mathematician, philosopher, and logician, most of whose short career was spent as the first professor of mathematics at Queen's College, Cork in Ireland.
Here the goal was algorithmic: from the given probabilities of any system of events, to determine the consequent probability of any other event logically connected with those events. ==Death== In late November 1864, Boole walked, in heavy rain, from his home at Lichfield Cottage in Ballintemple to the university, a distance of three miles, and lectured wearing his wet clothes.
Boole's condition worsened and on 8 December 1864, he died of fever-induced pleural effusion. He was buried in the Church of Ireland cemetery of St Michael's, Church Road, Blackrock (a suburb of Cork).
Augustus De Morgan had worked on the logic of relations, and Charles Sanders Peirce integrated his work with Boole's during the 1870s.
University College Cork, George Boole 200 Bicentenary Celebration, GeorgeBoole.com. Ivor Grattan-Guinness, The Search for Mathematical Roots 1870–1940.
Surveys of these developments were published by Ernst Schröder, Louis Couturat, and Clarence Irving Lewis. ===20th-century development=== In 1921, the economist John Maynard Keynes published a book on probability theory, A Treatise of Probability.
Victor Shestakov at Moscow State University (1907–1987) proposed a theory of electric switches based on Boolean logic even earlier than Claude Shannon in 1935 on the testimony of Soviet logicians and mathematicians Sofya Yanovskaya, Gaaze-Rapoport, Roland Dobrushin, Lupanov, Medvedev and Uspensky, though they presented their academic theses in the same year, 1938.
In 1937 Shannon went on to write a master's thesis, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in which he showed how Boolean algebra could optimise the design of systems of electromechanical relays then used in telephone routing switches.
Victor Shestakov at Moscow State University (1907–1987) proposed a theory of electric switches based on Boolean logic even earlier than Claude Shannon in 1935 on the testimony of Soviet logicians and mathematicians Sofya Yanovskaya, Gaaze-Rapoport, Roland Dobrushin, Lupanov, Medvedev and Uspensky, though they presented their academic theses in the same year, 1938.
But the first publication of Shestakov's result took place only in 1941 (in Russian).
A 2003 article provides a systematic comparison and critical evaluation of Aristotelian logic and Boolean logic; it also reveals the centrality of wholistic reference in Boole's philosophy of logic. ====1854 definition of the universe of discourse==== In every discourse, whether of the mind conversing with its own thoughts, or of the individual in his intercourse with others, there is an assumed or expressed limit within which the subjects of its operation are confined.
Hence, Boolean algebra became the foundation of practical digital circuit design; and Boole, via Shannon and Shestakov, provided the theoretical grounding for the Information Age. ===21st-century celebration=== The year 2015 saw the 200th anniversary of Boole's birth.
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