George Boole

George Boole (2 November 1815 to 8 December 1864) was an English mathematician and philosopher often credited with revolutionizing logic by transforming it from a philosophical study of language into a mathematical system of algebraic equations using binary values and logical operators. He was the son of a shoemaker, received a primary school education and learned Latin and modern languages through various means. At sixteen he began teaching to support his family, he established his own school at nineteen, and later ran a boarding school in Lincoln. In 1849 he was appointed the first professor of mathematics at Queen's College, Cork, in Ireland, where he worked predominantly in differential equations and algebraic logic.