The Mathematical Analysis of Logic

George Boole is known as the first logician to apply algebraical methods to logic successfully. His work, first published in 1847, laid the foundations for what is known today as Boolean algebra and the propositional calulus. Written in response to the altercation between Sir William Hamilton and Augustus de Morgan over the quantification of the predicate within syllogistic theory, its innovations led other logicians, among them William Stanley Jevons, John Venn, Charles Sanders Pierce and Ernst Schroder, to refine and develop Boole's system. In turn, their efforts were incorporated by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell in the system of "Principia Mathematica".