BOOLE, GEORGE

Boole, George: translation

(1815–1864)

English mathematician and logician. Born in Lincoln and educated locally, Boole worked as a schoolmaster until he gained recognition as a mathematician, and became professor at Queen's College, Cork, Ireland, in 1849. His pamphlet The Mathematical Analysis of Logic (1847) pioneered the assimilation of logic to mathematics, or the algebra of classes. The work was continued in An Investigation of the Laws of Thought (1854). Boole also published many works in pure mathematics, and on the theory of probability. His name is remembered in the title of Boolean algebra, and the algebraic operations he investigated are denoted by Boolean operators.