George Boole 200 Inaugural Lectures

University College Cork is delighted to welcome Professor Muffy Calder OBE, Professor of Computing Science at the University of Glasgow, and Professor Alberto Sangiovanni Vincentelli, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California Berkeley, to its renowned campus for the George Boole 200 Inaugural Lectures. The lectures,hosted by Professor Patrick Fitzpatrick, will be followed by a panel discussion and question and answer session. Desmond MacHale, Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at University College Cork, and author of the seminal biography The Life and Work of George Boole: a prelude to the digital age (Cork University Press, 2014) will join the panel. These lectures will bring Boole’s logic and algebra to life, showing how Boolean thought has influenced our modern world.

The event is free to attend but registration is required.

University College Cork, Ireland greatly appreciates the support of Mr Brian Kingham and Reliance Cyber Services, who have so generously enabled the George Boole 200 Inaugural lectures at the University.

George Boole 200

In 2015, University College Cork celebrates the bicentenary of George Boole, 1815-64. Born in Lincoln, Boole was a mathematical genius who was largely self-taught. His appointment as the first Professor of Mathematics at this University in 1849 provided him with the opportunity to develop his most important work, An Investigation of the Laws of Thought. Boole is a pivotal figure whose work laid the scientific foundations for the ‘information age’. His invention of Boolean algebra and symbolic logic pioneered a new mathematics. His legacy surrounds us everywhere, in the computers, information storage and retrieval systems, electronic circuits and controls that support life, learning and communications in the 21st century. Read more

A Little about the Speakers

Muffy Calder OBE is Professor of Computing Science at Glasgow University and currently Chief Scientific Adviser for Scotland. She is a Royal Society Wolfson Merit Award Holder and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and the British Computer Society. In 2011, she was awarded the OBE for services to Computer Science.Read more

Alberto Sangiovanni Vincentelli holds the Edgar L. and Harold H. Buttner Chair of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California at Berkeley. He is an IEEE/RSE Wolfson James Clerk Maxwell Medal winner and has been a Fellow of the IEEE since 1982 and a Member of the National Academy of Engineering, the highest honour bestowed upon a US engineer, since 1998. Read more