Sunday, November 1, 2009

The original Working Class Boy Made Good, Boole was born in the wrong time, in the wrong place, and definitely in the wrong class - he didn't have a hope of growing up to be a mathematical genius, but he did it anyway.
Born in the English industrial town of Lincoln, Boole was lucky enough to have a father who passed along his own love of math. Young George took to learning like a politician to a pay rise and, by the age of eight, had outgrown his father's self-taught limits.
A family friend stepped in to teach the boy basic Latin, and was exhausted within a few years. Boole was translating Latin poetry by the age of twelve. By the time he hit puberty, the adolescent George was fluent in German, Italian and French. At 16 he became an assistant teacher, at 20 he opened his own school.

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