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First job
George Boole was born on Silver Street in Lincoln. A self-taught philosopher, logician and mathematician, Boole was just 16 years old when he got his first job as a teacher. -
Awards
The Royal Society has given Royal Medals for outstanding achievements in biological, physical and applied sciences . In 1844, George Boole was awarded the Royal Medal for Mathematics for his paper ‘On a General Method of Analytics’. This paper, and the award of the prestigious medal, drew the attention of Britain’s leading mathematicians and would lead to his professorship at Queen’s College Cork (now University College Cork) in Ireland 5 years later. -
Founded schools
His passion for education and learning led him to found two schools in the city; one in Free School Lane in 1834 and one at Pottergate in 1840. -
Famous Lecturer
He was lecturing in Lincoln on another local hero, Sir Isaac Newton. -
Marriage
George and Mary Boole married in Cork, Ireland In 1855 and the couple went on to add five daughters to their family: Mary Ellen, Margaret, Alicia, Lucy, and Ethel Lilian. Boole’s biographer Desmond McHale comments that Boole ‘must have seen the irony of a man with an interest in probability fathering five daughters in a row’. -
Memory
The Teaching Window’ in Lincoln Cathedral stands in memory of George Boole and depicts the calling of Samuel from the Bible – at the request of his widow. Funds for the window were raised by his friends in Lincoln after his untimely death in 1864, at the young age of 49 -
End
Boole contracted pneumonia after walking three miles from his home to Queen's College in a rainstorm on November 24, 1864. He died on December 8 -
Book
Indeed, in 1938 Claude Shannon published a paper - drawing on Boole’s 1884 book ‘The Mathematical Analysis of Logic’ - on which modern digital computer circuits are based.
