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George Boole

Original nameGeorge Boole

British Mathematician, Founder of Boolean Algebra

The Laws Behind the Technology · Theoretical Founders

Boolean AlgebraSymbolic LogicThe Mathematical Basis of Digital Circuit Design

Who they are

George Boole (1815–1864) was a British mathematician of poor birth who mastered higher mathematics almost wholly by self-study, and in 1854 published An Investigation of the Laws of Thought, systematically proposing an algebraic system that carried out symbolic logical deduction wholly with the two values "true" and "false" — thereafter called "Boolean algebra" — seeking to describe completely the basic laws of human logical reasoning in rigorous mathematical symbolic language. When Boole built this algebraic system his research motive was purely interest in the abstract field of philosophical logic, and he wholly failed to foresee that this theory would, nearly a century later, become the most indispensable mathematical tool of electronic engineering and computer science — until in 1937 Claude Shannon pointed out in his master’s thesis that the "true/false" two-valued logical operation in Boolean algebra happened to correspond perfectly to the combinational operation of the "connected/disconnected" physical states of circuit switches, and Boolean algebra thereby leapt from a relatively obscure branch of pure mathematics to the fundamental theoretical basis of all later digital circuits, computer logic gates, and even the conditional statements of modern programming languages — a classic case in the history of mathematics of "pure theoretical research, nearly a century later, at last shining in a wholly unforeseen field of application."

Primary sourcesGeorge Boole, An Investigation of the Laws of Thought (1854)

Key stories

A Wholly Self-Taught Mathematician

Boole was born to a not-wealthy English shoemaker’s family, never received formal higher mathematics education, accumulated mathematical knowledge wholly by self-study, began teaching in primary school at sixteen to help the family, and thereafter, by the deep mathematical grounding of his self-study and continually published research papers, gradually won scholarly recognition, at last appointed professor of mathematics at Queen’s College, Cork (now University College Cork) — this experience of "wholly self-taught, at last a master" is itself a rather inspiring anecdote in the history of technology.

An Obscure Mathematics That Eighty Years Later Became the Foundation of the Computer

When Boole built "Boolean algebra," a mathematical system purely for studying the laws of abstract logical reasoning, his original intent was wholly abstract exploration in philosophy and mathematical logic, and for nearly eighty years after his death no one would foresee that this theory would become the most basic and indispensable mathematical tool of all electronic engineering and computer science; only when Claude Shannon revealed in his 1937 master’s thesis the perfect correspondence between Boolean algebra and circuit-switch states did this previously relatively obscure branch of pure mathematics truly meet its historic moment of changing the whole technological world.

Relationships

Disciple

📊Claude Shannon

Echoes today

Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.

The "boolean" in programming languagesAlmost all modern programming languages directly use "boolean," a term named for his surname, for the "true/false" two-valued data type, one of the most widely used basic computer-science terms.

Appears in

The Birth of the Computer and the Information AgeFrom Abstract Logic to "Computability" to Circuit Design

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