George Boole

George Boole

George Boole was a well known mathematician. He was born in Lincoln, Lincolnshire, England on November 2, 1815 and died on December 8, 1864 in Ballintemple, County Cork, Ireland. Boole has achieved many accomplishments and has won many awards for his accomplishments.

Boole did not study for an academic degree, but he started working at the age of 16 as an assistant school teacher with an interest in language. However, in 1835 he opened his own school and began to study mathematics on his own. He studied the works of Pierre-Simon Laplace and Joseph-Louis Lagrange, which later became the basis of his first mathematics paper. After receiving encouragement from Duncan Gregory, he began publishing in the Cambridge Mathematical Journal. Boole began to study algebra and published an application of algebraic methods to the solution of differential equations in the Transactions of the Royal Society, which he then received the Society's Royal Medal. This is when he started to get his fame. In 1849, Boole was appointed to the chair of mathematics at Queens College, Cork. This is where he taught for the rest of his life, which is where he gained the reputation of being an outstanding and dedicated teacher.

In 1854, he published An Investigation into the Laws of Thought, on which are founded the Mathematical Theories of Logic and Probabilities. He approached logic in a new way reducing it to a simple algebra, incorporating logic into mathematics. He introduced the analogy between algebraic symbols and those that represent logic forms. That is when Boole began the algebra of logic called Boolean algebra, which now finds application in computer construction, switching circuits, and more.

He also worked on differential equations, the calculus of finite differences, and general methods in probability. He published the differential equations in the Treatise on Differential Equations in 1859 and the calculus of finite differences in the Treatise on the Calculus of Finite Differences in 1860. He has published around 50 papers and was one of the first to investigate the basic properties of numbers, such as the distributive property, which underlies the subject of algebra.

Boole has been recognized for his work and has been awarded many honours. He has received honorary degrees from the universities of Dublin and Oxford. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1857 and received his first medal in 1844 from the Royal Society. Unfortunately, his career ended at a rather early age of 49 years old.

If I were to integrate the life and work of George Boole into teaching a mathematics topic, I would use it for the intermediate grades. I would bring social studies and the life of Boole into the mathematic topic and have students find out the history of the mathematics that was invented by the mathematician. I would ask students to find how the mathematics was invented.