John Venn
John Venn was born at Hull, Yorkshire on August 4, 1834 and died at Cambridge on April 4,
1923. John Venn''s mother, Martha Sykes, came from Swanland near Hull, Yorkshire and died while John Venn was
still quite young. John Venn’s father was Rev Henry Venn
who, at the time of John Venn’s birth, was the rector of the parish of Drypool near Hull.
John
Venn was a British Logician and a philosopher who introduced the Venn diagram
in 1881, including
set theory, probability, logic, statistic, and computer science. From his
family background, John Venn was strictly brought up, and there was no thought
that he would follow the tradition of his family into the priesthood. After
finishing the Highgate School, Venn entered the Caius
College, Cambridge in 1853. He graduated from the Caius
College in 1857 and shortly afterwards he was elected as a fellow of the college. He
was ordained as a deacon at Ely in 1858 and became a priest in 1859. In 1862,
he returned to Cambridge
as a lecturer in moral science. John Venn was most interested in
Logic and he
published three texts on the subject. He wrote The Logic of Chance which
introduced the frequency interpretation of probability in 1866, Symbolic Logic which introduced the Venn diagram in 1881,
and The Principles of Empirical Logic in 1889.
In 1883, John Venn was
elected to the Royal society. In 1897, he wrote a
history of his college,
called The Biographical History of
Gonville and Caius College, 1349-1897. A stained glass window in his
college commemorates his works.
He commenced a complication
of biographical notes of the alumni of the Cambridge University, a work which
was continued by his son, John Archibald Venn (1883-1897) and published in 10
volumes from 1922-1953. At the Hull
University, he is
commemorated by the Venn building which was build in 1928.
In
a recent BBC poll, Venn was voted as the third greatest mathematicians of the
modern times, narrowly beaten by Sir Isaac Newton and Leonhard Euler, who
ranked the first and the second respectively.
Venn
diagrams are illustrations used in
the branch of mathematics known as set theory.
They show the mathematical or logical relationship
between different groups of things (sets). A Venn diagram shows all the
possible logical relations between the sets.
World of Mathematics
on John Venn
John
Venn is most famous for his development of diagrams, later named after him,
that depict relationships between sets.
Although Gottfried Wilhelm von Liebniz and Leonhard Euler had used similar diagrams, Venn''s were considered
more descriptive and easier to understand. He also helped to develop George
Boole''s system of mathematical logic.
A
Venn diagram is a pictorial representation of the relationships among sets.
There is an outer rectangle that stands for the universal set, within which are
circles or ellipses representing subsets of the universal set. For instance,
Venn called three circles (R, S, and T) subsets of set U. The intersections of
these circles and their complements split set U into eight non overlapping
areas, the unions of which produced 256 distinct Boolean combinations of
sets R,
S, and T.
In
1866 Venn wrote The Logic of Chance,
which had major influence on the evolution of the
theory of statistics and developed an aspect of
probability theory called frequency theory. Meanwhile, he was becoming
dissatisfied with the Anglican Church, which he decided
to leave in 1870. Afterward, although Venn continued to be a devout
church-goer, he dedicated himself mainly to his academic career.
Venn
published Symbolic Logic, an
attempt to correct and interpret Boole''s work, in 1881. His Principles of Empirical Logic camet in 1889, but critics largely agreed that the first work was Venn''s most
original. Meanwhile, Venn had become enamored of history and had written one for his alma mater in 1897.
More impressive, however, was his compilation (with his son) of a history of Cambridge University. An enormous undertaking, the
first of two volumes appeared in 1922.
Aside
from his academic endeavors, Venn also enjoyed building machines. His talent
for such extended to a device that bowled balls for cricket; the machine was so
effective that the top players of an Australian team could not even make contact
with the balls during a trial run in 1909. Venn died in Cambridge, England
in 1923.
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