Augustus De Morgan

Augustus De Morgan (27 June 1806 – 18 March 1871) was a British mathematician and logician. He formulated De Morgan's laws and introduced the term mathematical induction, making its idea rigorous.[1] The crater De Morgan on the Moon is named after him.

Augustus De Morgan was born in 1806.[2] His father was Col. Augustus De Morgan, who held various appointments in the service of the East India Company. His mother descended from James Dodson, who computed a table of anti-logarithms, that is, the numbers corresponding to exact logarithms. Augustus De Morgan became blind in one eye a month or two after he was born. The family moved to England when Augustus was seven months old. As his father and grandfather had both been born in India, De Morgan used to say that he was neither English, nor Scottish, nor Irish, but a Briton "unattached", using the technical term applied to an undergraduate of Oxford or Cambridge who is not a member of any one of the Colleges. When De Morgan was ten years old, his father died. Mrs. De Morgan resided at various places in the southwest of England, and her son received his elementary education at various schools of no great account. His mathematical talents went unnoticed until he was fourteen, when a family-friend discovered him making an elaborate drawing of a figure in Euclid with ruler and compasses. She explained the aim of Euclid to Augustus, and gave him an initiation into demonstration. He received his secondary education from Mr. Parsons, a Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, who appreciated classics better than mathematics. His mother was an active and ardent member of the Church of England, and desired that her son should become a clergyman; but by this time De Morgan had begun to show his non-conforming disposition.

• Augustus De Morgan
• Reference: FamilySearch Family Tree - SmartCopy: Oct 7 2017, 13:43:32 UTC