Jean van Heijenoort
Jean Louis Maxime van Heijenoort (born July 23, 1912 in Creil , † March 29, 1986 in Mexico City ) was a French mathematical logician , known for his work in the history of logic, and Trotskyist . From 1932 to 1939 Heijenoort was Leon Trotsky's personal secretary .
life and work
Van Heijenoort grew up as the son of a Dutchman in France. In 1932 he became a Trotskyist and, mainly because of his fluency (he spoke fluent Russian , German , French , English , Spanish ), secretary and bodyguard of Leon Trotsky on the island of Buyukada , later in Mexico City. Before Trotsky's assassination in 1940, he separated from him for personal reasons and moved to New York in 1939 with his second wife, Beatrice Bunny Guyer , where he worked for the Socialist Workers Party . In 1940 he became secretary of the Fourth International , but resigned when Felix Morrow and Albert Goldman formed a moderate group within the SWP and were eventually expelled from it, as was Heijenoort in 1947. In an article in " Partisan Review " under the pseudonym Jean Vannier he swore from Marxism in 1948. He also published his Trotskyist articles under a pseudonym, which helped him avoid persecution in the McCarthy era. Later he was reluctant to comment on his political past, but he helped the archives of the Houghton Library at Harvard University to organize the papers from Trotsky's estate and also published a volume of Trotsky's correspondence in 1980. In 1978 he wrote a book about his time with Trotsky. He was shot dead by his fourth, now estranged wife while visiting her in Mexico City. She then took her own life.
In 1949 he received his doctorate in mathematics at New York University under JJ Stoker with a work on differential geometry (On locally convex surfaces), then turned to the philosophy of mathematics and logic under the influence of Georg Kreisel . He taught philosophy (initially only part-time) at Columbia University and from 1965 to 1977 as a professor at Brandeis University . He then went to Stanford University , where he was involved in editing the works of Kurt Gödel . He is known for his Source Book in Mathematical Logic , published in 1967 , which contains English translations of many historically important works, including the first complete translation of Gottlob Frege's conceptual writing. It ends with the translation of Gödel's 1931 work on his incompleteness theorem. Most of this work was previously very difficult to access. Heijenoort also provided comments on the work (as did Willard van Orman Quine and Burton Dreben) and corrected typographical and other errors. The book has also been criticized for its omissions (especially the omission of Ernst Schröder , Charles S. Peirce , the exposure of Frege to Giuseppe Peano ).
Heijenoort was a US and French citizen. He also appears as a character in the film Frida by Julie Taymor in 2002 when one of Frida Kahlo's lovers in Mexico City. He was married four times.
Fonts
- Logic as Language and Logic as Calculus, Synthesis, Vol. 17, 1967 pp. 324-30.
- With Trotsky in Exile: From Prinkipo to Coyoacan , Harvard University Press 1978
- Selected essays . Bibliopolis, Naples 1985
As editor:
- From Frege to Gödel: A Source Book in Mathematical Logic, 1879-1931 . Harvard University Press 1967, reprinted 1977.
- Kurt Gödel: Collected Works, Vols. I, II . Oxford Univ. Press. 1986, 1990
- Jacques Herbrand : Ecrits Logiques . Presses Universitaires de France.
- Leon et Natalia Trotsky: Correspondance 1933-38 , Paris, Gallimard 1980.
literature
- Irving Anellis: Van Heijenoort: Logic and Its History in the Work and Writings of Jean van Heijenoort . Modern Logic Publishing 1994
- Anita Burdman Feferman: From Trotsky to Gödel: The Life of Jean Van Heijenoort . Wellesley Massachusetts, AK Peters 1993. With an appendix by Solomon Feferman .
- Ivor Grattan-Guinness The Search for Mathematical Roots: 1870-1940 , Princeton University Press 2000
Web links
- Biography on the Trotsky Network, PDF file
- Estate in the University of Texas Library
- Jean van Heijenoort Internet Archive
Individual evidence
- ↑ Another selection was published by Geraldine Brady in From Peirce to Skolem , North Holland 2000
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Van Heijenoort, Jean |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Van Heijenoort, Jean Louis Maxime (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French Trotskyist and historian of logic |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 23, 1912 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Creil , France |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 29, 1986 |
| Place of death | Mexico city |