Tuesday, August 18th, 2009 12:51 am

George Boole 1815-1864

The inventor of "Boolean algebra"

Born in Lincoln, England, the son of a shoemaker and a lady's maid, George Boole left school early to support his family. He earned money from teaching and had set up his own school by 1834. He taught himself advanced mathematics and gained a reputation from his published papers. In 1841 he introduced Invariant Theory, a new branch of mathematics, and the concept of invariance later became part of the inspiration for Einstein's theory of relativity. George was awarded the first ever gold medal for mathematics by the Royal Society of London in 1844, and was appointed the first professor of mathematics at Queen's College (now University College) Cork in 1849.

While at Cork he published The Laws of Thought (1854), which introduced the mathematics used in today's computers and earned him the title "father of symbolic logic". He has also been called "the founder of pure mathematics".

Concepts such as set theory, binary numbers and probability can all be traced to his work.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON GEORGE BOOLE search the web

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