Georg spinning top

Georg Kreisel (born September 15, 1923 in Graz , † March 1, 2015 in Salzburg ) was a British-American logician and mathematician.

He was born in Austria and, because of his Jewish background, before the Nazi invasion of Austria in 1938, he was sent to England by his parents, where he began studying mathematics at Trinity College at Cambridge University at the age of 19 , with a bachelor's degree in 1944. His Compatriot Ludwig Wittgenstein considered him his best student. During the Second World War he worked in British military research (he studied, among other things, the effects of waves on the artificial harbors built for the Normandy landings) and received his doctorate from Cambridge University after the war . After the war he was close friends with the Anglo-Irish writer Iris Murdoch . The English physicist and Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick counted him among his most important mentors. He taught at Reading University from 1949 to 1960 , in between (1955 to 1957) he switched to the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, New Jersey, USA, where he came at the invitation of Kurt Gödel (who in turn was encouraged by Freeman Dyson ). 1958 to 1959 he was at Stanford University and 1960 to 1962 at the University of Paris . In 1962 he was appointed professor at Stanford University, where he remained until his retirement in 1985.

Kreisel worked on various fields of mathematical logic and proof theory , where he became known for his so-called "Unwinding" program. He dealt in detail with the theories of Kurt Gödel , with whom he was at the Institute for Advanced Study and with whom he then corresponded.

In 1966 he was elected to the Royal Society .

In 1958 he was invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Edinburgh (Ordinal logics and the characterization of informal concepts of proof).

Own work (excerpt)

• On the interpretation of non-finitist proofs - Part I, J. Symbolic Logic, Volume 16, 1951, pp. 241-267, Part II, Volume 17, 1952, pp. 43-58
• Mathematical significance of consistency proofs , J. Symbolic Logic, Volume 23, 1958, pp. 155-182
• A survey of proof theory , J. Symbolic Logic, Volume 33, 1968, pp. 321-388
• Hilbert`s Program , Dialectica, Volume 12, 1958, pp. 346–372, reprinted in Benacerraf, Putnam (editor), Philosophy of Mathematics. Selected Readings , Prentice Hall 1964
• Proof theory: Some personal recollections , in Gaisi Takeuti (editor) Proof Theory , 2nd edition, Elsevier 1987, pp. 395-405
• Logical aspects of computation: Contributions and distractions , in Odifreddi (editor): Logic and Computer Science , Academic Press, 1990
• On the idea (1) of logical closure , Annals of Pure and Applied Logic, Volume 56, 1992, pp. 19-41
• with Jean-Louis Krivine : Elements of mathematical logic (model theory) , North Holland 1967 (French original Dunod 1966)
  • German translation: Model theory: an introduction to mathematical logic and basic theory , Springer Verlag 1972
• Piergiorgio Odifreddi (editor): Kreiseliana: about and around Georg Kreisel , Wellesley, Massachusetts, AK Peters 1996 (collection of articles by and about Georg Kreisel)

literature

• S. Feferman : Kreisel's "unwinding" Program , in Odifreddi (Ed.) Kreisleriana , 1996, pp. 247-273
• CN Delzell: Kreisel's unwinding of Artin's proof , in Odifreddi (Ed.) Kreisleriana , 1996, pp. 113–246
• Luiz Carlos Pereira: Review of Odifreddi (Ed.) Kreiseliana: About and Around Georg Kreisel , Review of Modern Logic, Volume 8, 2000, pp. 127/131, online .

Web links

• Literature by and about Georg Kreisel in the catalog of the German National Library
• John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson :  Georg Kreisel. In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .