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George Boole’s Mathematical Examination Papers
Presented here is a hardback notebook with handwritten and printed examination papers set by George Boole, Professor of Mathematics, Queen’s College, Cork. Some papers are glued onto the pages, others written directly onto the page of the notebook. A number of papers have handwritten notes in the hand of Boole, otherwise known as annotations. Some of these mathematical notations are possibly solutions to the questions set for the examination.
Subjects being examined include simple equations, decimal fractions, differential calculus, spherical trigonometry, arithmetic, algebra and geometry, maxima and minima, Third Year’s Science Scholarships, etc.
We cannot be certain if this is a complete set of all the examination papers set by Boole during his time in Queen’s College, Cork. He was appointed Professor of Mathematics in 1849 and the earliest examination paper within is from June 1851. We do know the compilation of the notebook continued after the death of Boole in 1864 as the latest examination papers are dated October 1874.
You may notice that in the index we have placed square brackets around a word – e.g. [carbon copy]. This is the norm when listing archival material to convey to a researcher a degree of uncertainty of fact on the part of the archivist.
CREDITS:
Project Co-Ordinator: Crónán Ó Doibhlin, Research Collections & Communications, UCC Library
Indexing: Emer Twomey, Archivist, UCC Library
Editing: Emer Twomey, Crónán Ó Doibhlin and Breeda Herlihy (Librarian, Institutional Repository, UCC Library)
Digitisation: Eneclann, 5 Whitefriars, Aungier Street, Dublin 2, Ireland
Turning the Pages Software: Armadillo Systems