George Boole and Claude Shannon

This chapter presents brief biographical sketches of George Boole and Claude Shannon. George was born in Lincoln, a town in the north of England, on November 2, 1815. His father John, while simple tradesman (a cobbler), taught George geometry and trigonometry, subjects John had found of great aid in his optical studies. Boole was essentially self-taught, with a formal education that stopped at what today would be a junior in high school. Eventually he became a master mathematician (who succeeded in merging algebra with logic), one held in the highest esteem by talented, highly educated men who had graduated from Cambridge and Oxford. Claude was born on April 30, 1916, in Petoskey, Michigan. He enrolled at the University of Michigan, from which he graduated in 1936 with double bachelor's degrees in mathematics and electrical engineering. It was in a class there that he was introduced to Boole's algebra of logic.