Year of celebration of George Boole at UCC to kick off with lectures

University College Cork (UCC) is celebrating the bicentenary of forefather of the information age George Boole, who was the college’s first professor of mathematics.

Born in Lincoln in England in 1815, Boole was a largely self-taught mathematical genius who is recognised today as being the ‘forefather of the information age’.

His creation of Boolean algebra and symbolic logic pioneered a new strand of mathematics, which was employed in the work of scientific and engineering giants such as Claude Shannon and Alan Turing, and many others, in the development of the computer.

Boole’s legacy has come full circle back to UCC with the involvement of researchers in the School of Engineering and the Tyndall National Institute at UCC in major collaborative projects with Synopsys at Irish and European level.

The year of celebration at UCC kicks off with the George Boole 200 Inaugural Lectures on 5 February.

Co-founder of Synopsys and Cadence Prof Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, University of California Berkeley and the former chief scientific adviser for Scotland Prof Muffy Calder OBE, University of Glasgow are to speak in UCC on how Boolean thought has influenced our modern world.

Synopsys and Cadence are two of the world’s largest electronic design automation companies and both have operations in Dublin.

The pioneering research of Sangiovanni-Vincentelli has contributed to major advancements in the semiconductor and electronics area and his universe is built on Boolean logic.

Professor of computing science at Glasgow University, Calder’s research is in modelling and reasoning about the behaviour of complex software and biochemical systems using computer science, mathematics and automated reasoning techniques.