William Stanley Jevons

“ The personal character of Boole inspired all his friends with the deepest esteem. He was marked by the modesty of true genius, and his life was given to the single-minded pursuit of truth. Though he received a medal from the Royal Society for his memoir of 1844, and the honorary degree of LL.D. from the university of Dublin, he neither sought nor received the ordinary rewards to which his discoveries would entitle him. ”

“ He did not regard logic as a branch of mathematics, as the title of his earlier pamphlet might be taken to imply, but he pointed out such a deep analogy between the symbols of algebra and those which can be made, in his opinion, to represent logical forms and syllogisms, that we can hardly help saying that logic is mathematics restricted to the two quantities, 0 and 1. By unity Boole denoted the universe of thinkable objects; literal symbols, such as x, y, z, v, u, &c., were used with the elective meaning attaching to common adjectives and substantives. ”

“ Few distinguished men, indeed, have had a less eventful life. Almost the only changes which can be called events are his successful establishment of a school at Lincoln, its removal to Waddington, his appointment in 1849 as professor of mathematics in the Queen’s College at Cork, and his marriage in 1855 to Miss Mary Everest, who, as Mrs Boole, afterwards wrote several useful educational works on her husband’s principles. ”