It took months for him to be fully exonerated. Unfortunately, his translation of an ancient Greek poem, published in the local press, was accused of plagiarism. However, in his early to mid teens his real love was languages and he taught himself Latin, Greek and French (by his mid 20s he was also proficient in German, Italian and Hebrew). By age 10 George had achieved the equivalent maths level to a 16 year old nowadays.
Mostly he was self-taught, encouraged by his brilliant father who was self-taught in most things too. On street corners he would show off his spelling ability for pennies. Fearing George would not live long, they immediately Christened him at the Church of St Swithin just around the corner.Įven before infant school age, George showed early intellectual prowess. In 1807 he set up shop in Lincoln and in 1815 he and his wife Mary were blessed with the first of their four children. He entered a 14 year training to become a Master Shoemaker, one of the most elevated of the ancient trades. However, like his brothers, John left farming in the 1790s for less physical, more lucrative and more reliable work. His father John came from the Booles of Saxilby, just outside Lincoln. Indeed, “Boole” is a variant spelling of “Bull”. George was descended from Lincolnshire yeoman farming stock. Mobile phone to parking meter, television to MRI scanner and almost everything in between, George is your man! Yet if a thing is digital, or has a digital aspect, it benefits from Boole. Even so, most Lincolnites, let alone the wider public, have never heard of him.
#Does boole duesto go into digital works full#
An Irish university rejoices in dedicated stained glass in its Great Hall, and Lincoln Cathedral has a full length window celebrating his greatness. To cap that off, he also laid some of the foundations for ‘Pure Maths’ and gave us many aspects of calculus used daily by scientists and technologists of every type.Īcknowledged by those aware of the roots of modern science, a crater on the moon is named after Boole. As if that wasn’t enough, he was the youngest and poorest winner of the Royal Society’s Gold Medal for a hundred years. He invented “Boolean Logic” which is the binary system at the heart of silicon chips and all things digital. But very few will know of the bicentenary of George Boole, the Lincoln man who has had most recent worldwide impact.
Similarly, most will be aware of Sir Isaac Newton as the county’s most illustrious son. Most readers interested in Lincolnshire will probably know that 2015 is the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. Unbeknownst to most of us, he’s responsible for the ‘digital DNA’ of everyday life. George Boole, Lincolnshire’s forgotten genius is 200 years old this year. So who was George Boole? Dave has written a brilliant guest post for me, all about Lincolnshire’s Victorian Digital Hero: Much of this awakening is down to the sustained and dogged influence of my friend, former colleague and co-director of the Lincoln Boole Foundation, Dave Kenyon. When I first mentioned to a few local acquaintances that Boole came from Lincoln I was met with a few blank looks, but now, in Boole’s bicentenary year, there are welcome signs of a growing recognition here of his global importance. I really cannot recall when I first heard of George Boole, the creator of Boolean logic, but I do remember being intrigued when I spotted the plaque on his former house in Pottergate, Lincoln, when I first came to work in the City.
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