I would like to start off by saying that I, along with the rest of the family, am honored. My uncle would be so proud right now, if he was here.
Well okay. My uncle- George Boole was born in 1815 and passed in 1864. He’s being honored today by the Dead Mathematician Society for his extensive studies, discoveries, and teachings of mathematics.
Boole was born in
Lincoln, England- an industrial town. He got his mathematical intelligence and love from his father. He was taught basic Latin by a family friend and quickly caught on. He began translating Latin poetry at age twelve. Shortly there after he was fluent in German, Italian, and French. At the age of sixteen he became a teacher’s assistant, and at twenty he opened his own school. It’s pretty interesting to learn that this incredible man who accomplished so much is part of my blood line.
Okay moving along- he studied so many things. Isaac-Newton’s principals and works of the 18th and 19th century along with some French mathematicians Pierre-Simon Lapalace and Joseph-Louis Lagrange are a few works and people he studied.
At the age of twenty four he published his 1st paper- named ‘Researches on the Theory of Analytical Transformations’- which was published in The Cambridge Mathematical Journal. It was then that Boole began to push the limits of mathematics.
By 1844 Boole concentrated on the uses of combined algebra and calculus to process infinitely small and large figures. That year he also received a Royal Society medal for analytic contributions. ‘The Mathematical Analysis of Logic’ was published in 1847. This analysis expanded on Gottfried Leibniz’s’ earlier Logic and math, but argued that logic was principally a discipline of mathematics, rather than philosophy. This paper won him the admiration of distinguished logician Augustus de Morgan and a place on the faculty of Ireland’sQueen
College. It was there that he came up with linguistic algebra and three most basic operations AND, OR and NOT which formed the basis of his premises.
More works Boole accomplished are ‘Treatise on Differential Equations’-1859.
And The ‘Treatise on the Calculus of Finite Differences’-1860.
My long lost uncle Boole died at the age of 49. Ironically the cause of his death was teaching in cold, wet clothing from walking two miles in the rain to get to class. So I guess when your grandfather tells you as a kid “I used to walk two miles to school”… or to work….. Now you know it’s a true tale of hardship and determination, in which my uncle George Boole actually did and passed because of. Thank you all for the honor to get to speak of this wonderful man it’s been such a pleasure and something I know I surely will never forget.
