Google has chosen to honour the 200th birthday of the British mathematician George Boole, whose work on logic and algebra has been credited with laying the foundations for the computer age.

Here are five things you may not know about him:

1. His system of Boolean Logic paved the way for modern electrical engineering and computer science

Boole created a system, known as Boolean Logic, where all mathematical variables could only boil down to two variables - “true” or “false” or “on” and “off”.

These ideas were put to use more than 70 years after his death when Victor Shestakov at Moscow State University in Russia proposed using the system to design electrical switches, according to the Scientific American.

This simple “on-off” system later went on to form the bedrock of all computer code.

7 people who helped create the internet and don’t get any credit Show all 7 1 /7 7 people who helped create the internet and don’t get any credit 7 people who helped create the internet and don’t get any credit Claude Shannon (1916-2001) Shannon took the work done by Boole and re-purposes it for computers, allowing us to understand how to share information with the. It begun “information theory” — a system of thought that would let us build the internet Getty 7 people who helped create the internet and don’t get any credit Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) The internet now is largely algorithms: formulas or procedures that computers can run to solve problems. Those are so deeply integrated into our world that they are almost invisible. But Lovelace created the first one, in the early 19th century, helping lay the groundwork for the machine learning and artificial intelligence that now runs the internet Getty 7 people who helped create the internet and don’t get any credit George Boole (1815-1864) Boole helped formulate the kind of logic that would allow the internet and the binary that powers it to flourish. The structures of thinking that he proposed would eventually come to allow computers to understand us, and power the search engines that we use to get around the internet Getty 7 people who helped create the internet and don’t get any credit Leonard Kleinrock (1934-) Kleinrock helped formulate the idea of packet switching, a central part of the way that computers are able to share information with each other over networks. The theoretical frameworks that he proposed would eventually become the same technology that allows almost every computer in the world to send and receive information from the internet Getty 7 people who helped create the internet and don’t get any credit Vint Cerf (1943-) and Robert Kahn (1938-) Together Cerf and Kahn helped invent the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP). Those two technologies decide how computers communicate each other — in essence creating the internet as we know it Getty 7 people who helped create the internet and don’t get any credit Ray Tomlinson (1941-) Life online wouldn’t be what it is today without email. Tomlinson created a system to allow people to send messages to each other over ARPANET Andreu Veà 7 people who helped create the internet and don’t get any credit Larry Roberts (1937-) Larry Roberts helped create ARPANET, a military network that helped uncover and prove many of the technologies that would go on to power the internet. While Tim Berners-Lee often gets hailed for creating the web, Roberts also contributed to the early work that went into helping him Michel Bakni

2. He was self-taught and had little formal education

Boole was born in Lincoln in 1815 to a shoemaker and had little formal schooling beyond primary school.

At the age of 16 he was forced to become the main breadwinner for his parents and three younger siblings after his father’s business collasped.

He became a teacher in Doncaster and Liverpool before returning to Lincoln where he got involved in the local Lincoln Mechanics’ Institution when it was founded in 1833.

From there he began to learn mathematics but it took him several years to master calculus as he had no tutor.

3. He was a polymath

In addition to mathematics, he also taught himself French, German and Latin.

Once he had mastered those languages, he went on to teach himself Greek and translated a poem by the ancient Greek poet Meleager which his father had published in 1828 when he was just 14.

This led to a local controversy as a Lincoln schoolmaster claimed a 14 year old boy with little formal schooling could not possibly have done it by himself.

4. He founded a school when he was just 19

While Boole was learning mathematics and foreign languages, he also found the time to found a small school in his hometown in 1834.

Four years later in 1838 another schoolmaster in Waddington, Lincolnshire died and Boole was invited to run his boarding school.

In 1840, he opened a boarding school in Lincoln again and was beginning to have his mathematical work published.

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5. He became the first professor of mathematics at the newly founded Queen’s College, Cork (now University College Cork) in Ireland in 1849.

Despite having no university degree, Boole’s increasing fame in mathematical circles lead to other mathematicians recommending him for the professorship.

It was there that he met his wife Mary Everest in 1850 and would go on to have five children before his death in 1864.

To celebrate the bicentenary of his birth, University College Cork, has set up georgeboole.com to mark his life and works.