Elementary link between George Boole and Sherlock Holmes' nemesis Moriarty

Elementary, my dear Watson? Maybe so, as an event next week at University College Cork will hear that the inspiration for Professor James Moriarty, nemesis of Sherlock Holmes, was actually mathematician George Boole.

Boole was the the first professor of mathematics at Queen’s College — now UCC — and is also widely seen as one of the fathers of computer science. However, it seems the Lincoln-born polymath may also have been the main inspiration behind Moriarty, the criminal mastermind created by author Arthur Conan Doyle.

At a talk to be held at UCC’s Aula Maxima on August 26, Boole’s biographer, Prof Des MacHale, will expand on his theory that Boole was the blueprint for the Moriarty character, who was described by Holmes as “the Napoleon of crime”.