Google on Monday celebrated mathematician George Boole’s 200th birthday with an interactive doodle on its homepage. His legacy of Boolean algebra laid the foundations of digital age.
Georgeboole.com, a University of College Cork website that is dedicated to him, says the Englishman “invented a new kind of mathematics by classifying thought and codifying it using algebraic language.”
Many of us his works were primarily in the fields of differential equations, probability and algebraic logic.
Boolean algebra
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, a German philosopher, polymath and mathematician, is seen as the man who laid the foundation for the modern binary number system but died without achieving his dream of a universal language. The fundamental idea of a binary yes-no or on-off principle, however, stayed. It was George Boole who picked up the combined efforts of others who followed, mixed his Boolean logic with binary language to produce the combinations that now allow computers to operate. > More..
“Boolean algebra would provide an ideal foundation for designing the electronic structure of computers, and for manipulating information within computers,” the website said.
In 1855, Boole was awarded the Keith Medal by the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Two years later, he was elected as Fellow to the prestigious Royal Society of London.
