John Venn - Philosopher
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| John Venn | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | (1834-08-04)4 August 1834 Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire, England |
| Died | 4 April 1923(1923-04-04) (aged 88) Cambridge, England |
| Nationality | English |
| Fields | Mathematics Logic[1] Philosophy |
| Institutions | University of Cambridge |
| Alma mater | University of Cambridge |
| Notable awards | Fellow of the Royal Society |
John Venn, FRS[2][3] (4 August 1834 – 4 April 1923) was an English logician and philosopher. He is famous for introducing the Venn diagram, which is used in many fields, including set theory, probability, logic, statistics, and computer science.
Signature of John Venn
The Venn Building, University of Hull
Stained glass window at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, commemorating Venn and the Venn diagram
Life and career
John Venn was born on 4 August 1834 in Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire to Martha Sykes and Rev. Henry Venn, who was the rector of the parish of Drypool. His mother died when he was three years old.[4] Venn was descended from a long line of church evangelicals, including his grandfather John Venn.[5]
He began his education in London joining Sir Roger Cholmeley's School,[6] now known as Highgate School,with his brother Henry in September 1846. He moved on to Islington proprietary school and in October 1853 he went to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge[7].[8] In 1857, he obtained his degree in mathematics and became a fellow. In 1903 he was elected President of the College.[9], a post he held until his death.[10] He would follow his family vocation and become an Anglican priest, ordained in 1859, serving first at the church in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, and later in Mortlake, Surrey.[11]
In 1862, he returned to Cambridge University as a lecturer in moral science, studying and teaching logic and probability theory.
In 1868, he married Susanna Carnegie Edmonstone with whom he had one son, John Archibald Venn.
In 1883, he resigned from the clergy having concluded that Anglicanism was incompatible with his philosophical beliefs.[8] In that same year, Venn was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and was awarded a Sc.D. by Cambridge.
He died on 4 April 1923; the cause of his death was not specified.
Memorials
- Venn is commemorated at the University of Hull by the Venn Building, built in 1928
- A stained glass window in the dining hall of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, commemorates Venn's work.
- In commemoration of the 180th anniversary of Venn's birth, on 4 August 2014, Google replaced its normal logo on global search pages with an interactive and animated Google doodle that incorporated the use of a Venn diagram. [12]
Publications
Venn compiled Alumni Cantabrigienses, a biographical register of former members of the University of Cambridge.[13] This work is still being updated online, see #External links, below. His other works include:
- "Consistency and Real Inference" (link is external). Mind 1 (1). January 1876.
- Symbolic Logic (link is external). London: Macmillan and Company. 1881. ISBN 1-4212-6044-1.
- "On the Employment of Geometrical Diagrams for the Sensible Representation of Logical Propositions" (link is external). Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society 4: 47–59. 1880.
- The Logic of Chance: An Essay on the Foundations and Province of the Theory of Probability, with Especial Reference to Its Application to Moral and Social Science (link is external) (First ed.). London and Cambridge: Macmillan. 1866. . Two further editions were published[14][15]
- Caius College (link is external). London: F. E. Robinson & Company. 1901.
- Caius, John (1904). John Venn, ed. The Annals of Gonville and Caius College (link is external). Printed for the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, sold by Deighton, Bell & Co.
- Annals of a Clerical Family: Being Some Account of the Family and Descendants of William Venn, Vicar of Otterton, Devon, 1600-1621 (link is external). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1904. ISBN 978-1-108-04492-9.
- On Some of the Characteristics of Belief (link is external). London and Cambridge: MacMillan an Co. 1870.
Notes
- Jump up ^ Venn 1880.
- Jump up ^ Anon 1926.
- Jump up ^ Pickles 2004.
- Jump up ^ Famous-mathematicians.com.
- Jump up ^ School of Mathematics 2003.
- Jump up ^ Highgate School Register
- Jump up ^ http://www.oxforddnb.com/templates/article.jsp?articleid=36639 (link is external)
- ^ Jump up to: a b Duignan 2014.
- Jump up ^ http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Obits/Venn.html (link is external)
- Jump up ^ http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/625445/John-Venn (link is external)
- Jump up ^ Soylent Communications 2014.
- Jump up ^ YouTube (link is external)
- Jump up ^ Venn 1922.
- Jump up ^ Venn 1876.
- Jump up ^ Venn 1888.
References
- Venn, John (1922). Alumni Cantabrigienses: A Biographical List of All Known Students, Graduates and Holders of Office at the University of Cambridge, from the Earliest Times to 1900 (link is external). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Venn, J. (1880). "I.On the diagrammatic and mechanical representation of propositions and reasonings". Philosophical Magazine Series 5 10 (59): 1–18. doi:10.1080/14786448008626877 (link is external). edit (link is external)
- Anon (1926). "Obituary Notices of Fellows Deceased: Rudolph Messel, Frederick Thomas Trouton, John Venn, John Young Buchanan, Oliver Heaviside, Andrew Gray". Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 110 (756): i–v. doi:10.1098/rspa.1926.0036 (link is external). edit (link is external)
- Pickles, John D. (2004). ‘Venn, John Archibald (1883–1958)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/40972 (link is external). edit (link is external)
- Duignan, Brian (22 May 2014). "John Venn (English logician and philosopher)" (link is external). Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 3 August 2014.
- Anon. "John Venn – Mathematician Biography, Facts and Pictures" (link is external). Famous-mathematicians.com. Retrieved 3 August 2014.
- Anon (October 2003). "Venn biography" (link is external). School of Mathematics and Statistics University of St Andrews, Scotland. Retrieved 3 August 2014.
- Soylent Communications (2014). "John Venn" (link is external). Retrieved 3 August 2014.
External links
- A Cambridge Alumni Database (link is external)
- The Venn archives (link is external) clarify the confusing timeline of the various Venns.
- Obituary of John Venn (link is external) (New York Times)
- Portrait of Venn (link is external) by Charles Brock, and a link to a site about Venn
- Another (clearer) view of the Venn stained glass window (link is external)
- John Venn (link is external) at Find a Grave