The following sections of this BookRags Literature Study Guide is offprint from Gale's For Students Series: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Commonly Studied Works: Introduction, Author Biography, Plot Summary, Characters, Themes, Style, Historical Context, Critical Overview, Criticism and Critical Essays, Media Adaptations, Topics for Further Study, Compare & Contrast, What Do I Read Next?, For Further Study, and Sources.
(c)1998-2002; (c)2002 by Gale. Gale is an imprint of The Gale Group, Inc., a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Gale and Design and Thomson Learning are trademarks used herein under license.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction: "Social Concerns", "Thematic Overview", "Techniques", "Literary Precedents", "Key Questions", "Related Titles", "Adaptations", "Related Web Sites". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults: "About the Author", "Overview", "Setting", "Literary Qualities", "Social Sensitivity", "Topics for Discussion", "Ideas for Reports and Papers". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
All other sections in this Literature Study Guide are owned and copyrighted by BookRags, Inc.
A system of expressing problems in logic algebraically worked out by a self-taught English mathematician in the mid-1800s formed the basis for modern computer programming. The discoverer of this system was George Boole (1815-1864), born in Lincoln, England, in 1815. Boole's father was a cobbler with a great interest in mathematics, which he passed on to the boy. At age sixteen, though he had little formal education, Boole began teaching, and at age twenty he opened his own school. He devoted his spare time to studying mathematics and began contributing papers on the subject to the newly established Cambridge Mathematical Journal in 1840. In 1849, though he had never earned a university degree, Boole was appointed professor of mathematics at Queen's College, Cork, Ireland. He held this post until his death in 1864, a result of his devotion to teaching: he insisted on lecturing in wet clothes after a two-mile walk through a cold November rain and then succumbed to pneumonia.
Boole began his investigations into the connection between mathematics—specifically, algebra--and logic in the 1840s. He published his findings in an 1847 pamphlet, The Mathematical Analysis of Logic, and his great work of 1854, An Investigation of the Laws of Thought, on Which Are Founded the Mathematical Theories of Logic and Probabilities. In these books, which established what is now called symbolic logic, Boole explained what Gottfried Leibniz had tried to work out much earlier: how to convert logic into mathematic symbols. He set out logical axioms for logic and chose symbols and operations similar to algebraic notation to express the logical forms and perform the operations. The basic operations in Boolean algebra are AND, OR, and NOT; objects either do or do not share particular properties. Boole had worked out a way to reduce human reasoning to a series of yes-or-no choices.
Boolean algebra attracted little attention until the twentieth century. In his 1938 master's thesis for MIT, Claude Shannon (b. 1916) showed how to apply the binary nature of Boolean algebra, or symbolic logic, to relay circuits, which are either open or closed. Computer scientists were soon able to use Boolean algebra to work out programs of logical commands communicated to the computer through binary (on or off) circuit operations.