John Venn

John Venn, FRS,[2][3] FSA[4] (4 August 1834 – 4 April 1923) was an English mathematician, logician and philosopher noted for introducing the Venn diagram, used in the fields of set theory, probability, logic, statistics, competition mathematics, and computer science. In 1866, Venn published The Logic of Chance, a ground-breaking book which espoused the frequency theory of probability, offering that probability should be determined by how often something is forecast to occur as opposed to “educated” assumptions. Venn then further developed George Boole's theories in the 1881 work Symbolic Logic, where he highlighted what would become known as Venn diagrams.

The Venn Building, University of Hull
Stained glass window at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, commemorating Venn and the Venn diagram
For other people named John Venn, see John Venn (disambiguation).

John Venn
Born(1834-08-04)4 August 1834
Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire, England
Died4 April 1923(1923-04-04) (aged 88)
Cambridge, England
NationalityEnglish
Alma materGonville and Caius College, Cambridge
Known forVenn diagram
AwardsFellow of the Royal Society
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
Logic[1]
Philosophy
InstitutionsGonville and Caius College, Cambridge
Signature

Life and career

John Venn was born on 4 August 1834 in Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire,[5] 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.[6] Venn was descended from a long line of church evangelicals, including his grandfather John Venn.[7] Venn was brought up in a very strict atmosphere at home. His father Henry had played a significant part in the Evangelical movement and he was also the secretary of the ‘Society for Missions to Africa and the East’, establishing eight bishoprics overseas. His grandfather was pastor to William Wilberforce of the abolitionist movement, in Clapham.

He began his education in London joining Sir Roger Cholmeley's School,[8] 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.[4][5] In 1857, he obtained his degree in mathematics and became a fellow. In 1903 he was elected President of the College, a post he held until his death.[5] He followed his family vocation and became an Anglican priest, ordained in 1859, serving first at the church in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, and later in Mortlake, Surrey.[9]

In 1862, he returned to Cambridge as a lecturer in moral science, studying and teaching logic and probability theory,[5] and, beginning around 1869, giving intercollegiate lectures. These duties led to his developing the diagram which would eventually bear his name.

He built rare machines. A certain machine was meant to bowl cricket balls. The machine was so fascinating that when Australian cricketers were visiting Cambridge, the machines were used to entertain their arrival. The bowl cricket ball machine that Venn built actually bowled out the top ranked player of the team four times consecutively.[10]

I began at once somewhat more steady work on the subjects and books which I should have to lecture on. I now first hit upon the diagrammatical device of representing propositions by inclusive and exclusive circles. Of course the device was not new then, but it was so obviously representative of the way in which any one, who approached the subject from the mathematical side, would attempt to visualise propositions, that it was forced upon me almost at once.

— John Venn[11]

In 1868, he married Susanna Carnegie Edmonstone with whom he had one son, John Archibald Venn. His son entered the mathematics field as well.[3]

In 1883, he resigned from the clergy, having concluded that Anglicanism was incompatible with his philosophical beliefs.[5] In that same year, Venn was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society,[12] and in 1884, he was awarded a Sc.D. by Cambridge.[13]

He died on 4 April 1923.[5]

Charity work and a civic presence in the town of Cambridge

Newspaper archives show that Venn was a very active member of local civic society in Cambridge, and a committee member of the Cambridge Charitable Organisations Society, later elected vice-chairman in December 1884.[14]

Venn was president of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society in 1908–1909.[15] He is also listed as a vice president of the Cambridge Provident Medical Institution.[16]

Venn was a prominent supporter of votes for women. He co-signed with his wife Susanna, a letter to the Cambridge Independent Press published 16 October 1908, encouraging women to put themselves forward as candidates for the up-and-coming Cambridge town council elections.[17] The letter was co-sponsored by Lady Maud Darwin, wife of Sir George Darwin and Florence Ada Keynes.

The newspaper archives reveal that Venn was also a passionate gardener, regularly taking part in local competitions organised by groups such as the Cambridgeshire Horticultural Society, winning prizes for his roses in July 1885[18] and for his white carrots later that September.[19]

Memorials
  • In 2017 The Drypool Bridge in Hull was decorated with intersecting circles, in honour of Venn.[20]
  • Venn is commemorated at the University of Hull by the Venn Building.[21]
  • 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.[22]
  • Venn Street in Clapham, London, which was the home of his grandfather, shows a Venn diagram on the street sign.[23]

Publications

Venn compiled Alumni Cantabrigienses, a biographical register of former members of the University of Cambridge.[24] His other works include:

  • Venn, John (January 1876). "Consistency and Real Inference". Mind. 1 (1).
  • Venn, John (1881). Symbolic Logic. London: Macmillan and Company. ISBN 978-1-4212-6044-0.
  • Venn, John (1880). "On the Employment of Geometrical Diagrams for the Sensible Representation of Logical Propositions". Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society. 4: 47–59.
  • Venn, John (1866). 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 (First ed.). London and Cambridge: Macmillan.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link). Two further editions were published.[25][26]
  • Venn, John (1901). Caius College. London: F. E. Robinson & Co.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Caius, John (1904). Venn, John (ed.). The Annals of Gonville and Caius College. Printed for the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, sold by Deighton, Bell & Co.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Venn, John (1904). Annals of a Clerical Family: Being Some Account of the Family and Descendants of William Venn, Vicar of Otterton, Devon, 1600–1621. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-04492-9.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Venn, John (1870). On Some of the Characteristics of Belief. London and Cambridge: Macmillan and Co.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
gollark: Fascinating.
gollark: It appears that I may have *slightly* made an undeletable tag.
gollark: This is possible.
gollark: Unknown, but computer bruteforce has established a lower bound of 3.01x10^12.
gollark: There's also the macron constant, which is how long it will take for macron to occur.

References
  1. Venn, John (July 1880). "I. On the Diagrammatic and Mechanical Representation of Propositions and Reasonings" (PDF). The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science. 5. 10 (59): 1–18. doi:10.1080/14786448008626877. Archived (PDF) from the original on 16 May 2017. Google Books
  2. Anonymous (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.
  3. Pickles, John D. "Venn, John Archibald". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/40972. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  4. Gibbins, John R. (2004) "Venn, John (1834–1923)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/36639
  5. Duignan, Brian (22 May 2014). "John Venn (English logician and philosopher)". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 3 August 2014.
  6. Anonymous. "John Venn – Mathematician Biography, Facts and Pictures". Famous-mathematicians.com. Retrieved 3 August 2014.
  7. Anonymous (October 2003). "Venn biography". School of Mathematics and Statistics University of St Andrews, Scotland. Retrieved 3 August 2014.
  8. Highgate School Roll 1833–1912, Unwin Brothers Ltd 1913
  9. Soylent Communications (2014). "John Venn". Retrieved 3 August 2014.
  10. "John Venn". Famous Inventors. Retrieved 2 August 2018.
  11. Edwards, Anthony William Fairbank (2004). Cogwheels of the Mind: The Story of Venn Diagrams. Baltimore, Maryland, USA: Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 3. ISBN 978-0-8018-7434-5.
  12. "Portrait of John Venn". Royal Society Picture Library. Royal Society. Retrieved 2 August 2018.
  13. Edwards, A. W. F (2009). "Statistical Methods for Evolutionary Trees". Genetics. 183 (1): 5–12. doi:10.1534/genetics.109.107847. PMC 2746166. PMID 19797062.
  14. "Cambridge Independent Press". Cambridge Independent Press. 6 December 1884. Retrieved 13 April 2017.
  15. "Cambridge Independent Press". Cambridge Independent Press. 29 October 1909. Retrieved 13 April 2017.
  16. "Cambridge Independent Press". Cambridge Independent Press. 13 February 1886. Retrieved 13 April 2017.
  17. "Cambridge Independent Press". Cambridge Independent Press. 16 October 1908. Retrieved 13 April 2017.
  18. "Cambridge Independent Press". Cambridge Independent Press. 11 July 1885. Retrieved 13 April 2017.
  19. "Cambridge Independent Press". Cambridge Independent Press. 19 September 1885. Retrieved 13 April 2017.
  20. Young, Angus (5 June 2017). "John Venn inspired ₤325k makeover of Hull's Drypool Bridge is now complete". Hull Daily Mail. Retrieved 12 November 2017.
  21. "John Venn". Carnegie Heritage Centre. Retrieved 2 August 2018.
  22. Antonimuthu, Rajamanickam (2014). "John Venn Google Doodle". YouTube.
  23. "Rev and Dr Venn". London Remembers. Retrieved 2 August 2018.
  24. 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. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  25. Venn, John (1876). The Logic of Chance: An Essay on the Foundations and Province of the Theory of Probability, with Especial Reference to Its Logical Bearings and Its Application to Moral and Social Science (Second ed.). Macmillan.
  26. Venn, John (1888). The logic of chance: an essay on the foundations and province of the theory of probability, with especial reference to its logical bearings and its application to moral and social science, and to statistics (Third ed.). Macmillan.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)


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