George Boole (1815-1864)

This mathematician is responsible for the logic behind today's computer technology. If you search a computer database you will use Boolean logic - if you use and to link two terms you narrow the search; if you use or to link the same terms , you broaden the search. Boole created a binary system of symbolic logic based on two numbers - 0 and 1 - that today we call Boolean algebra used in computer technology. In 1854, he published his masterpiece "An Investigation of the Laws of Thought."