Carol Karp

Carol Karp (born Carol van der Velde, born August 10, 1926 in Forest Grove , Ottawa County, Michigan , † August 20, 1972 in Maryland ) was an American mathematical logician.

Karp studied at Manchester College in Indiana (bachelor's degree in 1948) and at Michigan State University , where she made her master's degree in mathematics in 1950. She then went on to be an instructor at Michigan State and also traveled as a violinist in a women's orchestra for some time before embarking on doctoral studies at the University of Southern California . In 1959 she did her doctorate there under Leon Henkin in mathematical logic (Languages ​​with expressions of infinite length). Simultaneously with her studies, she previously taught from 1953 at what would later become New Mexico State University (then New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts) and at the College in Las Cruces in New Mexico , and from 1954 as Henkin's assistant in Berkeley. In 1957 she went to Japan with her husband Arthur Karp, whom she married in 1952 and who was in the US Navy . Then she was at the University of Maryland , from 1960 as an assistant professor, from 1963 as an associate professor and from 1966 as a professor. In 1972 she died of breast cancer, which she was diagnosed with in 1969.

As a logician she dealt with the logic of infinitely long sentences ( infinitary logic ), recursion theory and applications of logic in algebra.

The 1973 Karp Prize of the Association for Symbolic Logic , one of the most important logic prizes, is named after her.

Fonts

• Languages ​​with expressions of infinite length, North Holland 1964

literature

• Paul Campbell, Louise Grinstein: Women of Mathematics: A Bio-Bibliographic Sourcebook, 1987, ISBN 978-0313248498

Web links

• John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson :  Carol Karp. In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .