GEORGE BOOLE

 (1815 - 1864)

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George Boole was born in 1815 in Lincoln, England. The first profession he practised was the profession of an elementary school instructor. He even opened his own school at the age of twenty. Boole was very interested in mathematics and read books by some great masters such as Gauss and Laplace. After reading those difficult mathematical tracts, he had new ideas on the calculus of variations. They were published in The Cambridge Mathematical Journal. He was the first Professor of Mathematics at University College Cork (then called Queen's College). He was the inventor of mathematical logic. His books The Mathematical Analysis of Logic (1847) and An Investigation of the Laws of Thought (1854) form the basis of present-day computer science and cybernetics. And, of course, Boolean algebra owes its origin to him. Boole’s idea was to represent information only with the two logic states true or false. He gave the mathematical framework to carry out calculations using this information.

In 1937, nearly 75 years after Boole's death, Claude Shannon, a student at MIT recognised the connection between electronic circuits and Boolean algebra. He transferred the two logic states to electronic circuits by assigning different voltage levels to each state. This connection was essential for the design of digital computers. 

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