The man who transposed human thought into algebra

"Walking through a field one day, a 17-year-old schoolteacher named George Boole had a vision. His head was full of abstract mathematics - ideas about how to use algebra to solve complex calculus problems. Suddenly, he was struck with a flash of insight: that thought itself might be expressed in algebraic form. Boole was born on November 2, 1815, at four o'clock in the afternoon, in Lincoln, England."

"But John was no ordinary shoemaker - he was an enthusiast of science and mathematics, as likely to be making telescopes as shoes. Appropriately, his son George received a quality education, studying the classics as well as mathematics and learning to play the flute and piano. He quickly became fluent in Latin and Greek, and his translations of classical poems were published in the local newspaper when he was 14 (creating some controversy when a reader refused to believe they were the work of a schoolboy)."

"He had learned calculus from books by French mathematicians - Lacroix, Lagrange, and Laplace - who were part of a tradition that followed the approach to calculus introduced by Leibniz. This was more abstract and algebraic than the geometric approach taken by Newton that was favored in England, disposing him to think about systems that were richer than mere arithmetic."

George Boole experienced a formative vision at age seventeen that thought might be expressed algebraically. He was born in Lincoln in 1815 to John and Mary Ann Boole. His father combined shoemaking with enthusiasm for science, and George received a broad education in classics, mathematics, and music. He became fluent in Latin and Greek and published translations at age fourteen that provoked controversy. After his father's business declined, he taught in Doncaster and read mathematics deeply, constrained by a cautious book-buying budget. He learned Leibnizian calculus from French texts, an algebraic approach that contrasted with Newtonian geometry and influenced his thinking about richer systems of thought, though his teaching duties initially delayed pursuing that vision.

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