Showing posts with label George Boole. Show all posts
Showing posts with label George Boole. Show all posts

Monday, October 10, 2022

A Sonnet by William Rowan Hamilton

     Despite their similar lifespans, it is said that British mathematicians William Rowan Hamilton (1805-1865) and George Boole (1815-1864) had no significant interactions; however, both wrote poetry.  Back in my posting on 9/12/2022, I offered a sonnet by Boole.   Below, a sonnet by Hamilton -- found, along with a rich supply of poetry and science, at this MIT website.

A sonnet by William Rowan Hamilton  

Monday, September 12, 2022

The Poetry of Mathematician George Boole

      One of the interesting poetry collections on my shelves is The Poetry of George Boole by Desmond MacHale (Logic Press, Ireland, 2020 -- and published in the USA for Logic Press by Lulu.com).  This is not simply a poetry collection -- but poetry with commentary.  MacHale includes more than seventy surviving poems by the Irish mathematician Boole (1815-1864) -- and he also discusses Boole's views of the connections between Science and the Arts with an initial chapter is entitled "Poetry and Mathematics."  

     It is quite appropriate that Boole should relate poetry to mathematics since he was, primarily, a mathematician; his Boolean algebra is basic to the design of digital computer circuits)   Boole's own poetry, however, found most of its inspiration outside of math.  Here is his Sonnet 20 (Sonnet to the Number Three); written in May 1846 and suggesting that belief in the religious Trinity is connected with our interpretation of space in three dimensions.