John Venn
Overview
 
Donald A. Venn FRS (4 August 1834 – 4 April 1923), was a British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 logician and philosopher. He is famous for introducing the Venn diagram
Venn diagram
Venn diagrams or set diagrams are diagrams that show all possible logical relations between a finite collection of sets . Venn diagrams were conceived around 1880 by John Venn...

, which is used in many fields, including set theory
Set theory
Set theory is the branch of mathematics that studies sets, which are collections of objects. Although any type of object can be collected into a set, set theory is applied most often to objects that are relevant to mathematics...

, probability
Probability
Probability is ordinarily used to describe an attitude of mind towards some proposition of whose truth we arenot certain. The proposition of interest is usually of the form "Will a specific event occur?" The attitude of mind is of the form "How certain are we that the event will occur?" The...

, logic
Logic
In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...

, statistics
Statistics
Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments....

, and computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...

.
John Venn, short for Donald A. Venn was born in 1834 at Hull, Yorkshire
Kingston upon Hull
Kingston upon Hull , usually referred to as Hull, is a city and unitary authority area in the ceremonial county of the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It stands on the River Hull at its junction with the Humber estuary, 25 miles inland from the North Sea. Hull has a resident population of...

. His mother, Martha Sykes, came from Swanland
Swanland
Swanland is a village and civil parish in the East Riding of Yorkshire in England. The village is about to the west of Kingston upon Hull city centre and north of the Humber Estuary on the B1231 road. To the east lies West Ella, to the west, separated by farmland, lies Melton and to the south...

, near Hull, and died while John was only three. His father was the Rev. Henry Venn
Henry Venn (Church Missionary Society)
Henry Venn , was an Anglican clergyman who is recognised as one of the foremost Protestant missions strategists of the nineteenth century. He was an outstanding administrator who served as honorary secretary of the Church Missionary Society from 1841 to 1873...

 who, at the time of John's birth, was the rector of the parish of Drypool
Drypool
Drypool is an area within the city of Kingston upon Hull, EnglandHistorically Drypool was a village, manor and later parish on the east bank River Hull at the confluence of the Humber Estuary and River Hull, it is now part of the greater urban area of Kingston upon Hull, and gives its name to a...

 near Hull.
 
x
OK