The life and work of George Boole : a prelude to the digital age / Desmond MacHale ; foreword by Professor Ian Stewart.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

MacHale, Des, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Boole, George, 1815-1864.

Boole, George.

Mathematicians--Great Britain--Biography.

Mathematicians.

Great Britain.

Ireland.

Mathematicians--Ireland--Biography.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xix, 342 pages : illustrations (black and white), portraits ; 24 cm

Edition:

New edition.

Place of Publication:

Cork, Ireland : Cork University Press, 2014.

Summary:

This book, aimed at the general reader, is the first full-length biography of George Boole (1815-1864) who has been variously described as the founder of pure mathematics, one of the fathers of computer science, and the discoverer of symbolic logic. Boole is mostly remembered as a mathematician and logician whose work found application in computer science long after his death, but this biography reveals Boole as much more than a mathematical genius; he was a child prodigy, self-taught linguist and practical scientist, turbulent academic and devoted teacher, social reformer and poet, psychologist and humanitarian, religious thinker and good family man, truly a nineteenth-century polymath. George Boole was born in Lincoln, England, the son of a struggling shoemaker. Boole was forced to leave school at the age of sixteen and never attended a university. He taught himself languages, natural philosophy and mathematics. After his father's business failed he supported the entire family by becoming an assistant teacher, eventually opening his own boarding school in Lincoln. He began to produce original mathematical research and, in 1844, he was awarded the first gold medal for mathematics by the Royal Society. Boole was deeply interested in the idea of expressing the workings of the human mind in symbolic form, and his two books on this subject, The Mathematical Analysis of Logic (1847) and An Investigation of the Laws of Thought (1854) form the basis of today's computer science and electronic circuitry. He also made important contributions to areas of mathematics such as invariant theory (of which he was the founder), differential and difference equations and probability. Much of the 'new mathematics' now studied by children in school set theory, binary numbers and Boolean algebra, has its origins in Boole's work. In 1849, Boole was appointed first professor of mathematics in Ireland's new Queen's College (now University College) Cork and taught and worked there until his tragic and premature death in 1864. In 1855, he had married Mary Everest, a niece of the man after whom the world's highest mountain is named. The Booles had five remarkable daughters including Alicia, a mathematician, Lucy, a professor of chemistry, and Ethel (Voynich), a novelist and author of The Gadfly. George Boole was a mystic genius, whose ideas have utterly transformed the world in which we live. Computers, information storage and retrieval systems, electronic circuits, and indeed the whole digital age depend vitally on the simple but ingenious mathematical system he invented, Boolean algebra. This book reveals Boole as a fascinating and complex man who was also a mathematical genius. Perhaps some day his ideas will help us to unite and reconcile body and mind, art and science, logic and psychology, and maybe even man and God. Book jacket.

Contents:

Chapter 1 Early Life 1

Chapter 2 His Own Master 25

Chapter 3 Social Involvement 34

Chapter 4 Early Mathematical Work 50

Chapter 5 The Cork Professorship 84

Chapter 6 Queen's College Cork 100

Chapter 7 Love and Marriage 119

Chapter 8 The Cuvierian Society 128

Chapter 9 The Laws of Thought 145

Chapter 10 Controversy 156

Chapter 11 Family Life and Social Attitudes 178

Chapter 12 Poetry 195

Chapter 13 Boole and Hamilton: Some Unanswered Questions 206

Chapter 14 Religion 220

Chapter 15 Later Mathematical Work 239

Chapter 16 The Final Years 257

Chapter 17 The Remarkable Boole Family 286.

Notes:

First published in 1985 by Boole Press Limited.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781782050049

1782050043

OCLC:

894252054