A five minute documentary on George Boole, creator of Boolean algebra and forefather of the digital age. The memorials mentioned are those in Lincoln where Boole was born. Click here for the Lincoln Boole Foundation, who encourage citizens of Lincoln and the world to celebrate George Boole’s digital legacy -especially in 2014 & 2015, his binary bicentenary.
Logic
Ones and Zeros: the life and work of George Boole
Mathematician and logician George Boole died 150 years ago today, on 8th December, 1864. Today also marks the start of the year-long schedule of events UCC are running to commemorate Boole, culminating in the bicentenary of his birth on 2nd November 2015 (see GeorgeBoole.com for more).
George Boole was born in Lincoln, the eldest son in a family of modest means. For details of his life as a self-taught mathematician to first professor in UCC (then Queens College Cork) in 1849, where he lived until his death see the detailed biography here.
Boole had a large impact on mathematics, providing the basis for invariant theory, and working on differential and difference equations, and probability. Developments of his work such as set theory and boolean algebra are taught to school children today.
However, of most interest philosophically are The Mathematical Analysis of Logic, and its successor An Investigation of the Laws of Thought, on which are founded the Mathematical Theories of Logic and Probabilities published in 1854. These proposed that ideas expressed in language can be expressed in algebraic form. This combination of philosophical logic and algebra, as DeMorgan said “would not have been believed until it was proved.”
George Boole 200 (UCC)
This video gives a brief introduction to the importance of George Boole, who will be the subject of a year of celebration in UCC next year, 2015. George Boole’s major achievement was Boolean Algebra, a major development in logic, which Frege later built on.
For Boole’s life and his contribution to the digital age, see this video Forgotten Genius: George Boole (YouTube), and for his place in philosophy Logic –The Structure of Reason Great Ideas of Philosophy (YouTube) (Boole is featured from 15:43 to 17:42). A biography of Boole is here.