Logic's Lost Genius

Logic's Lost Genius PDF Author: Eckart Menzler-Trott
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
ISBN: 1470428121
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 442

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Book Description
Gerhard Gentzen (1909–1945) is the founder of modern structural proof theory. His lasting methods, rules, and structures resulted not only in the technical mathematical discipline called “proof theory” but also in verification programs that are essential in computer science. The appearance, clarity, and elegance of Gentzen's work on natural deduction, the sequent calculus, and ordinal proof theory continue to be impressive even today. The present book gives the first comprehensive, detailed, accurate scientific biography expounding the life and work of Gerhard Gentzen, one of our greatest logicians, until his arrest and death in Prague in 1945. Particular emphasis in the book is put on the conditions of scientific research, in this case mathematical logic, in National Socialist Germany, the ideological fight for “German logic”, and their mutual protagonists. Numerous hitherto unpublished sources, family documents, archival material, interviews, and letters, as well as Gentzen's lectures for the mathematical public, make this book an indispensable source of information on this important mathematician, his work, and his time. The volume is completed by two deep substantial essays by Jan von Plato and Craig Smoryński on Gentzen's proof theory; its relation to the ideas of Hilbert, Brouwer, Weyl, and Gödel; and its development up to the present day. Smoryński explains the Hilbert program in more than the usual slogan form and shows why consistency is important. Von Plato shows in detail the benefits of Gentzen's program. This important book is a self-contained starting point for any work on Gentzen and his logic. The book is accessible to a wide audience with different backgrounds and is suitable for general readers, researchers, students, and teachers.

Logic's Lost Genius

Logic's Lost Genius PDF Author: Eckart Menzler-Trott
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
ISBN: 1470428121
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 442

Get Book

Book Description
Gerhard Gentzen (1909–1945) is the founder of modern structural proof theory. His lasting methods, rules, and structures resulted not only in the technical mathematical discipline called “proof theory” but also in verification programs that are essential in computer science. The appearance, clarity, and elegance of Gentzen's work on natural deduction, the sequent calculus, and ordinal proof theory continue to be impressive even today. The present book gives the first comprehensive, detailed, accurate scientific biography expounding the life and work of Gerhard Gentzen, one of our greatest logicians, until his arrest and death in Prague in 1945. Particular emphasis in the book is put on the conditions of scientific research, in this case mathematical logic, in National Socialist Germany, the ideological fight for “German logic”, and their mutual protagonists. Numerous hitherto unpublished sources, family documents, archival material, interviews, and letters, as well as Gentzen's lectures for the mathematical public, make this book an indispensable source of information on this important mathematician, his work, and his time. The volume is completed by two deep substantial essays by Jan von Plato and Craig Smoryński on Gentzen's proof theory; its relation to the ideas of Hilbert, Brouwer, Weyl, and Gödel; and its development up to the present day. Smoryński explains the Hilbert program in more than the usual slogan form and shows why consistency is important. Von Plato shows in detail the benefits of Gentzen's program. This important book is a self-contained starting point for any work on Gentzen and his logic. The book is accessible to a wide audience with different backgrounds and is suitable for general readers, researchers, students, and teachers.

Saved from the Cellar

Saved from the Cellar PDF Author: Jan von Plato
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319421204
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
Gerhard Gentzen is best known for his development of the proof systems of natural deduction and sequent calculus, central in many areas of logic and computer science today. Another noteworthy achievement is his resolution of the embarrassing situation created by Gödel's incompleteness results, especially the second one about the unprovability of consistency of elementary arithmetic. After these successes, Gentzen dedicated the rest of his short life to the main problem of Hilbert's proof theory, the question of the consistency of analysis. He was arrested in the summer of 1945 with other professors of the German University of Prague and died soon afterward of starvation in a prison cell. Attempts at locating his lost manuscripts failed at the time, but several decades later, two slim folders of shorthand notes were found. In this volume, Jan von Plato gives an overview of Gentzen's life and scientific achievements, based on detailed archival and systematic studies, and essential for placing the translations of shorthand manuscripts that follow in the right setting. The materials in this book are singular in the way they show the birth and development of Gentzen's central ideas and results, sometimes in a well-developed form, and other times as flashes into the anatomy of the workings of a unique mind.

Pearls from a Lost City

Pearls from a Lost City PDF Author: Roman Duda
Publisher: American Mathematical Society
ISBN: 1470410761
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
The fame of the Polish school at Lvov rests with the diverse and fundamental contributions of Polish mathematicians working there during the interwar years. In particular, despite material hardship and without a notable mathematical tradition, the school made major contributions to what is now called functional analysis. The results and names of Banach, Kac, Kuratowski, Mazur, Nikodym, Orlicz, Schauder, Sierpiński, Steinhaus, and Ulam, among others, now appear in all the standard textbooks. The vibrant joie de vivre and singular ambience of Lvov's once scintillating social scene are evocatively recaptured in personal recollections. The heyday of the famous Scottish Café--unquestionably the most mathematically productive cafeteria of all time--and its precious Scottish Book of highly influential problems are described in detail, revealing the special synergy of scholarship and camaraderie that permanently elevated Polish mathematics from utter obscurity to global prominence. This chronicle of the Lvov school--its legacy and the tumultuous historical events which defined its lifespan--will appeal equally to mathematicians, historians, or general readers seeking a cultural and institutional overview of key aspects of twentieth-century Polish mathematics not described anywhere else in the extant English-language literature.

Gentzen's Centenary

Gentzen's Centenary PDF Author: Reinhard Kahle
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 331910103X
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 561

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Book Description
Gerhard Gentzen has been described as logic’s lost genius, whom Gödel called a better logician than himself. This work comprises articles by leading proof theorists, attesting to Gentzen’s enduring legacy to mathematical logic and beyond. The contributions range from philosophical reflections and re-evaluations of Gentzen’s original consistency proofs to the most recent developments in proof theory. Gentzen founded modern proof theory. His sequent calculus and natural deduction system beautifully explain the deep symmetries of logic. They underlie modern developments in computer science such as automated theorem proving and type theory.

Sets, Models and Proofs

Sets, Models and Proofs PDF Author: Ieke Moerdijk
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319924141
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 141

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Book Description
This textbook provides a concise and self-contained introduction to mathematical logic, with a focus on the fundamental topics in first-order logic and model theory. Including examples from several areas of mathematics (algebra, linear algebra and analysis), the book illustrates the relevance and usefulness of logic in the study of these subject areas. The authors start with an exposition of set theory and the axiom of choice as used in everyday mathematics. Proceeding at a gentle pace, they go on to present some of the first important results in model theory, followed by a careful exposition of Gentzen-style natural deduction and a detailed proof of Gödel’s completeness theorem for first-order logic. The book then explores the formal axiom system of Zermelo and Fraenkel before concluding with an extensive list of suggestions for further study. The present volume is primarily aimed at mathematics students who are already familiar with basic analysis, algebra and linear algebra. It contains numerous exercises of varying difficulty and can be used for self-study, though it is ideally suited as a text for a one-semester university course in the second or third year.

An Introduction to Proof Theory

An Introduction to Proof Theory PDF Author: Paolo Mancosu
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192649299
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
An Introduction to Proof Theory provides an accessible introduction to the theory of proofs, with details of proofs worked out and examples and exercises to aid the reader's understanding. It also serves as a companion to reading the original pathbreaking articles by Gerhard Gentzen. The first half covers topics in structural proof theory, including the Gödel-Gentzen translation of classical into intuitionistic logic (and arithmetic), natural deduction and the normalization theorems (for both NJ and NK), the sequent calculus, including cut-elimination and mid-sequent theorems, and various applications of these results. The second half examines ordinal proof theory, specifically Gentzen's consistency proof for first-order Peano Arithmetic. The theory of ordinal notations and other elements of ordinal theory are developed from scratch, and no knowledge of set theory is presumed. The proof methods needed to establish proof-theoretic results, especially proof by induction, are introduced in stages throughout the text. Mancosu, Galvan, and Zach's introduction will provide a solid foundation for those looking to understand this central area of mathematical logic and the philosophy of mathematics.

Hilbert's Programs and Beyond

Hilbert's Programs and Beyond PDF Author: Wilfried Sieg
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195372220
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 452

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Book Description
David Hilbert was one of the great mathematicians who expounded the centrality of their subject in human thought. In this collection of essays, Wilfried Sieg frames Hilbert's foundational work, from 1890 to 1939, in a comprehensive way and integrates it with modern proof theoretic investigations.

The Logical Writings of Karl Popper

The Logical Writings of Karl Popper PDF Author: David Binder
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030949265
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 552

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Book Description
This open access book is the first ever collection of Karl Popper's writings on deductive logic. Karl R. Popper (1902-1994) was one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. His philosophy of science ("falsificationism") and his social and political philosophy ("open society") have been widely discussed way beyond academic philosophy. What is not so well known is that Popper also produced a considerable work on the foundations of deductive logic, most of it published at the end of the 1940s as articles at scattered places. This little-known work deserves to be known better, as it is highly significant for modern proof-theoretic semantics. This collection assembles Popper's published writings on deductive logic in a single volume, together with all reviews of these papers. It also contains a large amount of unpublished material from the Popper Archives, including Popper's correspondence related to deductive logic and manuscripts that were (almost) finished, but did not reach the publication stage. All of these items are critically edited with additional comments by the editors. A general introduction puts Popper's work into the context of current discussions on the foundations of logic. This book should be of interest to logicians, philosophers, and anybody concerned with Popper's work.

The Great Formal Machinery Works

The Great Formal Machinery Works PDF Author: Jan von Plato
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691174172
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 390

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Book Description
The information age owes its existence to a little-known but crucial development, the theoretical study of logic and the foundations of mathematics. The Great Formal Machinery Works draws on original sources and rare archival materials to trace the history of the theories of deduction and computation that laid the logical foundations for the digital revolution. Jan von Plato examines the contributions of figures such as Aristotle; the nineteenth-century German polymath Hermann Grassmann; George Boole, whose Boolean logic would prove essential to programming languages and computing; Ernst Schröder, best known for his work on algebraic logic; and Giuseppe Peano, cofounder of mathematical logic. Von Plato shows how the idea of a formal proof in mathematics emerged gradually in the second half of the nineteenth century, hand in hand with the notion of a formal process of computation. A turning point was reached by 1930, when Kurt Gödel conceived his celebrated incompleteness theorems. They were an enormous boost to the study of formal languages and computability, which were brought to perfection by the end of the 1930s with precise theories of formal languages and formal deduction and parallel theories of algorithmic computability. Von Plato describes how the first theoretical ideas of a computer soon emerged in the work of Alan Turing in 1936 and John von Neumann some years later. Shedding new light on this crucial chapter in the history of science, The Great Formal Machinery Works is essential reading for students and researchers in logic, mathematics, and computer science.

The Case of Academician Nikolai Nikolaevich Luzin

The Case of Academician Nikolai Nikolaevich Luzin PDF Author: Sergei S. Demidov
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
ISBN: 1470426080
Category : Mathematicians
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
The Soviet school, one of the glories of twentieth-century mathematics, faced a serious crisis in the summer of 1936. It was suffering from internal strains due to generational conflicts between the young talents and the old establishment. At the same time, Soviet leaders (including Stalin himself) were bent on “Sovietizing” all of science in the USSR by requiring scholars to publish their works in Russian in the Soviet Union, ending the nearly universal practice of publishing in the West. A campaign to “Sovietize” mathematics in the USSR was launched with an attack on Nikolai Nikolaevich Luzin, the leader of the Soviet school of mathematics, in Pravda. Luzin was fortunate in that only a few of the most ardent ideologues wanted to destroy him utterly. As a result, Luzin, though humiliated and frightened, was allowed to make a statement of public repentance and then let off with a relatively mild reprimand. A major factor in his narrow escape was the very abstractness of his research area (descriptive set theory), which was difficult to incorporate into a propaganda campaign aimed at the broader public. The present book contains the transcripts of five meetings of the Academy of Sciences commission charged with investigating the accusations against Luzin, meetings held in July of 1936. Ancillary material from the Soviet press of the time is included to place these meetings in context.