George Boole 1815 – 1864

George Boole was an English mathematician, logician, and philosopher and one of the founders of mathematical logic. Almost entirely self-taught, he became professor of mathematics at Queen's College, Cork, and produced two short books, The Mathematical Analysis of Logic and An Investigation of the Laws of Thought, that recast traditional logic in algebraic form. The system that bears his name is the foundation of modern digital computing and a key formal influence on the rise of analytic philosophy in the work of Frege, Russell, and Whitehead. He died of pneumonia at forty-nine.