John Venn Biography

John Venn was a British mathematician, philosopher and a logician who went on to become one of the most important contributors to the study of statistics. Although he was born in a deeply religious family, many of whose members ended up entering the clergy, John Venn instead became an academic and in spite of becoming a priest at one point of his life he was courageous enough to resign from his position since he believed that his own philosophies did not conform to the beliefs of the church. He continued to be an academic of importance at the famous University of Cambridge and worked in different branches of mathematics, logic and ‘philosophy of Science’. John Venn’s work on the models that led to the development of the celebrated Venn diagram is used to this day by academics, mathematicians, statisticians; in fact it is important to point out that some of his findings in relation to mathematics have also been used in computer science. Needless to say, John Venn is a giant of modern sciences who might have done most of his work in the 19th century but his body of work is still studied at schools and universities all across the world.