Des MacHale | |
---|---|
Born | Desmond MacHale 28 January 1946 Castlebar, County Mayo, Ireland |
Nationality | Irish |
Alma mater | University College Galway (BSc, MSc) University of Keele (PhD) |
Occupation(s) | Mathematician, author |
Known for | Biography of George Boole |
Children | Dominic MacHale |
Desmond MacHale (born 28 January 1946) is an Irish mathematician who is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at University College Cork. [1] [2] He is an author and speaker on several subjects, including George Boole, lateral thinking puzzles, and humour. He has published over 80 books, some of which have been translated into languages including Danish, Italian, Norwegian, Spanish, German, Korean, and Japanese. [3] [4]
Des MacHale was born in Castlebar, County Mayo. He earned his BSc and MSc in mathematical science at University College Galway in 1967 and 1968, and completed his PhD at the University of Keele in 1972 under Hans Liebeck. Since then he has been at University College Cork, where his research has focussed on group and ring theory, especially Boolean rings. [1]
In 1985 MacHale published George Boole: His Life and Work, the first book length biography of Boole. [5] In 2014, a year ahead of Boole's bicentennial, this was reissued in revised and expanded form as The Life and Work of George Boole: A Prelude to the Digital Age. He is considered the world's leading expert on Boole and in 2018 published another book New Light on George Boole, co-authored with Yvonne Cohen. [6] [7]
MacHale has also authored books on other subjects, including brainteasers and he has written more than 30 books of jokes and discussions of humour. [8] His Comic Sections: The Book of Mathematical Jokes, Humour, Wit and Wisdom is a book which combines two of his interests. He has written over a dozen books of lateral thinking problems with author Paul Sloane; and many of these problems are featured on the Futility Closet website. [9] He has written several books about the 1952 American film, The Quiet Man . He has spoken at schools, on radio, and television on the subjects of mathematics, humour, and puzzles. [10]
MacHale designed the logo of the Irish Mathematical Society. [11]
He is a longtime opponent of smoking, and for decades has played a role within the Irish Association of Non-Smokers. He appeared on RTÉ's The Late Late Show as early as the 1980s in an attempt to educate the public about the dangers of smoking. [5]
His son is the actor Dominic MacHale, known for The Young Offenders. [12] [13]
From 1984 to 2007, MacHale ran the Superbrain Competition at University College Cork, including setting the questions and grading the papers. [14] This annual competitive mathematics exam, now run by a committee of mathematics faculty, is open to UCC undergraduate and master's level students, and consists of 10 questions to be done in 3 hours.[ citation needed ] A book of the questions (with solutions) from 1984 to 2008 was published in 2011 as The First Twenty-Five Years of the Superbrain by Diarmuid Early & Des MacHale. [15]
Books by Des MacHale include: [16]
On George Boole Day, 2 November 2015, University College Cork awarded MacHale an honorary doctorate of literature in recognition of his contributions to scholarship on Boole. [17] [18]
On 15 October 2016 Maths Week Ireland presented MacHale with the inaugural "Raising Public Awareness of Maths" award. [7] [19]
George Boole was a largely self-taught English mathematician, philosopher and logician, most of whose short career was spent as the first professor of mathematics at Queen's College, Cork in Ireland. He worked in the fields of differential equations and algebraic logic, and is best known as the author of The Laws of Thought (1854), which contains Boolean algebra. Boolean logic, essential to computer programming, is credited with helping to lay the foundations for the Information Age.
The history of logic deals with the study of the development of the science of valid inference (logic). Formal logics developed in ancient times in India, China, and Greece. Greek methods, particularly Aristotelian logic as found in the Organon, found wide application and acceptance in Western science and mathematics for millennia. The Stoics, especially Chrysippus, began the development of predicate logic.
Professor James Moriarty is a fictional character and criminal mastermind created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to be a formidable enemy for the author's fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. He was created primarily as a device by which Doyle could kill Holmes and end the hero's stories. Professor Moriarty first appears in the short story "The Adventure of the Final Problem", first published in The Strand Magazine in December 1893. He also plays a role in the final Sherlock Holmes novel The Valley of Fear, but without a direct appearance. Holmes mentions Moriarty in five other stories: "The Adventure of the Empty House", "The Adventure of the Norwood Builder", "The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter", "The Adventure of the Illustrious Client", and "His Last Bow".
Keith James Devlin is a British mathematician and popular science writer. Since 1987 he has lived in the United States. He has dual British-American citizenship.
University College Cork – National University of Ireland, Cork (UCC) is a constituent university of the National University of Ireland, and located in Cork.
The Kingdom of Desmond was a historic kingdom in southwestern Ireland. It was founded in 1118 by Tadhg Mac Cárthaigh, King of Munster when the Treaty of Glanmire formally divided the Kingdom of Munster into Desmond and Thomond. It comprised all of what is now County Cork and most of County Kerry. Desmond was ruled by the Mac Cárthaigh (MacCarthy) dynasty. Other clans within the kingdom included the O'Sullivans and O'Donovans. Following the Norman invasion of Ireland in the late 12th century, the eastern half of Desmond was conquered by the Anglo-Normans and became the Earldom of Desmond, ruled by the Fitzmaurices and FitzGeralds—the famous Irish family known as the Geraldines. The king of Desmond, Diarmaid Mac Cárthaigh submitted to Henry II of England, but the western half of Desmond lived on as a semi-independent Gaelic kingdom. It was often at war with the Anglo-Normans. Fínghin Mac Carthaigh's victory over the Anglo-Normans at the Battle of Callann (1261) helped preserve Desmond's independence. The kings of Desmond founded sites such as Blarney Castle, Ballycarbery Castle, Muckross Abbey and Kilcrea Friary. Following the Nine Years' War of the 1590s, Desmond became part of the Kingdom of Ireland.
Louis Couturat was a French logician, mathematician, philosopher, and linguist. Couturat was a pioneer of the constructed language Ido.
Ethel Lilian Voynich was an Irish-born novelist and musician, and a supporter of several revolutionary causes. She was born in Cork, but grew up in Lancashire, England.
William Roland Hartston is an English journalist who has written the Beachcomber column in the Daily Express since 1998. He is also a chess player who played competitively from 1962 to 1987 and earned a highest Elo rating of 2485. He was awarded the title International Master in 1972, but is now best known as a chess author and presenter of the game on television.
An Investigation of the Laws of Thought on Which are Founded the Mathematical Theories of Logic and Probabilities by George Boole, published in 1854, is the second of Boole's two monographs on algebraic logic. Boole was a professor of mathematics at what was then Queen's College, Cork, now University College Cork, in Ireland.
Mary Everest Boole was a self-taught mathematician who is best known as an author of didactic works on mathematics, such as Philosophy and Fun of Algebra, and as the wife of fellow mathematician George Boole. Her progressive ideas on education, as expounded in The Preparation of the Child for Science, included encouraging children to explore mathematics through playful activities such as curve stitching. Her life is of interest to feminists as an example of how women made careers in an academic system that did not welcome them.
Platon Sergeevich Poretsky was a noted Russian Imperial astronomer, mathematician, and logician.
Alicia Boole Stott was a British mathematician. She made a number of contributions to the field and was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Groningen. She grasped four-dimensional geometry from an early age, and introduced the term "polytope" for a convex solid in four or more dimensions.
Ballintemple is a suburb of Cork city, Ireland. The village is situated on the east side of the city with its limits extending to the River Lee and the village of Blackrock further to the east. Originally, Ballintemple was a separate village but today it has been enclosed by the city.
Augustus De Morgan was a British mathematician and logician. He is best known for De Morgan's laws, relating logical conjunction, disjunction, and negation, and for coining the term "mathematical induction", the underlying principles of which he formalized. De Morgan's contributions to logic are heavily used in many branches of mathematics, including set theory and probability theory, as well as other related fields such as computer science.
Finghin MacCarthy, also known as Fineen of Ringrone, was King of Desmond from 1251 to his death in 1261, shortly after his famous victory over John FitzGerald, 1st Baron Desmond at the Battle of Callann. He was the son of Donal Gott MacCarthy, King of Desmond and founder of the MacCarthy Reagh dynasty, Princes of Carbery, and for that reason is considered to belong to them.
Tadhg na Mainistreach Mac Carthaigh Mór reigned as King of Desmond from 1390/2 to his death in 1428. He was the son of the previous king Domhnall Óg Mac Carthaigh Mór. According to the Annals of Inisfallen Tadhg Mac Carthaigh had the reputation as the greatest wine-drinker in Ireland when he died, but was still "a son worthy of his father". He was married to one Sebán, a daughter of "Garret the earl". This is likely a form of 'Siobhán' which translates as 'Joan,' so Sebán is probably a reference to Joan, a daughter of Gerald FitzGerald, 3rd Earl of Desmond.
Atamania (アタマニア) is a series of casual puzzle video games published by Level-5. The series comprises two, unrelated series of puzzle games. Tago Akira no Atama no Taisō is a collection of puzzles created by Akira Tago, a Japanese professor who has authored a series of books within Japan under the same name. Players read through stories and solve puzzles at their own leisure. Surōn to Makuhēru no Nazo no Sutōrī is based on the concept of lateral thinking puzzles, books authored by Paul Sloane and Des MacHale. The games have drawn comparison to the Professor Layton series, which is also published by Level-5.
Lucy Everest Boole FRIC was a British chemist and pharmacist who was the first woman to research pharmacy in England. She was the first female professor at the London School of Medicine for Women in the Royal Free Hospital, and the first female Fellow of the Royal Institute of Chemistry.
Maths Week Ireland (MWI) is an annual all-island mathematics outreach initiative which takes place throughout Ireland each October. It was founded in 2006 by Waterford Institute of Technology staff members Eoin Gill and Sheila Donegan, and is a project of that institution's STEM outreach Centre for the Advancement of Learning of Maths, Science and Technology (CALMAST). Gill and Donegan continue to direct and run MWI.