Log In

Hugh McColl Edit Profile

also known as MacColl

logician mathematician novelist scientist

Hugh McColl was a Scottish mathematician, logician, and novelist. He published a four-part article establishing the first known variant of the propositional calculus.

Background

McColl was born on January 11, 1837, in Strontian, Scotland, the son of John MacColl, a shepherd and farmer, and Martha Macrae. John MacColl was an educated man who taught his older children some Latin, Greek, and mathematics. However, Hugh did not benefit from his father's teaching since John MacColl died when Hugh was only three years old. Since Martha MacColl spoke only Gaelic, this meant that Hugh's first language was Gaelic. The family moved first to Letterfearn on Loch Duich, near to Kyle of Lochalsh, where Hugh's grandmother Anne Macrae lived. After a while, Malcolm MacColl, Hugh's elder brother by four years, remained with his grandmother in Letterfearn while Hugh, his mother, and the other children moved to Ballachulish, south of Fort William.

Education

McColl studied for a University of London degree, matriculating first in 1873 and taking his final Bachelor of Arts examinations in 1876.

Career

In 1858 McColl moved to England where he taught at various schools until 1865 when he moved to Boulogne-sur-Mer in France. While still in England, he married Mary Elisabeth Johnson, from Loughborough in Leicestershire, and they set up home together in Boulogne. This move seems to have been well thought out for, not only was Boulogne a prosperous town with much to offer the well-educated, it also had the advantage of having close links with England so McColl could in many ways have the best of both worlds.

When McColl arrived in Boulogne he began teaching mathematics and English at the Collège Communal in the town. He also took up giving private lessons soon after he arrived in Boulogne and, certainly by 1870, he was no longer teaching at the Collège Communal and supporting himself entirely by giving private tuition. He had published 'a pamphlet on ratios' in 1861 before moving to France, but once in Boulogne, he became much more active in publishing, particularly in the 'Questions, Problems' section and in the 'Solutions' section of the Educational Times.

He published a series of nine papers entitled Symbolic Logic in The Athenaeum between 1903 and 1904, and a series of eight articles Symbolic Reasoning in Mind between 1880 and 1906. As to his books, his first was Algebraical Exercises and Problems with Elliptical Solutions. His most famous book, however, was Symbolic Logic and Its Applications.

McColl continued to teach until 1908, essentially running a boarding school from his home. He retired in 1908 and, remaining in Boulogne, he moved to a new home near the center of the town.

Achievements

  • McColl’s work represents one of the first treatments of logical pluralism where he explores the possibilities of modal logic, the logic of fiction, connective logic, many-valued logic, and probability logic. His contributions to mathematical logic and its symbolic expression helped to clarify the subject in the particular period which may be said to begin with Boole’s An Investigation of the Laws of Thought and reach a climax in the Principia Mathematica of Whitehead and Russell.

Connections

In 1858 McColl married Mary Elisabeth Johnson, from Loughborough in Leicestershire, and they had four girls and one boy. His wife died on 2 February 1884 after a serious illness, and MacColl remarried on August 17, 1887, his second wife being Hortense Lina Marchal.

Father:
John McColl

Mother:
Martha Macrae

Spouse:
Hortense Lina Marchal

ex-spouse:
Mary Elisabeth Johnson