Portrait of the British mathematician George Boole (1815-1864). Boole, largely self-taught, was a school-teacher for several years before being appointed professor of mathematics at Queen's College, Cork, Ireland. In 1847 he developed a new form of algebra, the Boolean algebra, in an attempt to link for the first time two separate disciplines, mathematics and formal logic. His work was essential to the development of digital computers and also applied to other fields such as statistics and probability.