The need to support his family meant that George Boole (1815-64) was a largely self-educated mathematician. Widely recognised for his ability, he became the first professor of mathematics at Cork. Boole belonged to the British school of algebra, which held what now seems to modern mathematicians to be an excessive belief in the power of symbolism. However, in Boole's hands symbolic algebra became a source of novel and lasting mathematics. Also reissued in this series, his masterpiece was An Investigation of the Laws of Thought (1854), and his two later works A Treatise on Differential Equations (1859) and A Treatise on the Calculus of Finite Differences (1860) exercised an influence which can still be traced in many modern treatments of differential equations and numerical analysis. The beautiful and mysterious formulae that Boole obtained are among the direct ancestors of the theories of distributions and of operator algebras.
- ISBN10 0344083306
- ISBN13 9780344083303
- Publish Date 23 October 2018 (first published 16 May 2009)
- Publish Status Active
- Imprint Franklin Classics Trade Press
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 540
- Language English