John Charles Chenoweth McKinsey

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

John Charles Chenoweth McKinsey (* 1908 , † October 26, 1953 in Palo Alto , also JCC McKinsey and Chen McKinsey ) was an American mathematician, known for his work in the areas of mathematical logic and game theory . He also made significant contributions to modal logic .

Life

McKinsey received his BS and MS degrees from New York University and received his doctorate from the University of California in 1936 . His dissertation, supervised by Benjamin Abraham Bernstein , was entitled On Boolean functions of many variables . He was a Blumenthal Research Fellow at New York University from 1936 to 1937 and a Guggenheim Fellow from 1942 to 1943. During his time in New York, a close friendship with Alfred Tarski developed . McKinsey taught at Montana State College and in Nevada, eventually in Oklahoma, until he joined a research group at Douglas Aircraft Corporation , later the RAND Corporation , in 1947 .

McKinsey worked for RAND until his release in 1951. Because of his homosexuality, the FBI had declared his continued employment as a security risk, although McKinsey had never made it a secret and had been in a steady relationship for years. He is said to have complained to superiors: "How can anyone threaten me with disclosure when everybody already knows?" (German: "How could someone threaten me by revealing something that everyone already knows?"). After 1951 he taught at Stanford University , where he was later given a full professorship in philosophy. There he worked with Patrick Suppes on the axiomatization of classical mechanics . He died in 1953, presumably by suicide, in his home in Palo Alto.

Works (selection)

  • JCC McKinsey: Introduction to the Theory of Games . Dover Publications, New York 2003, ISBN 0-486-42811-7 .
  • JCC McKinsey: A New Definition of Truth. In: Synthesis. vol 7, 1948, pp. 428-433.
  • List of publications available online at philpapers.org

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Solomon Feferman , Anita Burdman Feferman: Alfred Tarski: Life and Logic . Cambridge University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-521-80240-7 .
  2. ^ A b c d Albert H. Bowker, John D. Goheen, Patrick Suppes: Memorial Resolution . ( Memento of the original from July 27, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 11 kB) Stanford Historical Society @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / histsoc.stanford.edu
  3. ↑ “ One of the very first applications of topology to (modal) logic is McKinsey's 1941 paper. "( Can Baskent : Top of-the Logic (PDF), German:" One of the very first applications of topology to modal logic is McKinsey's publication from 1941. ")
  4. ^ The Mathematics Genealogy Project, entry John Charles Chenoweth McKinsey . Retrieved March 24, 2012 .
  5. ^ A b Alex Abella: Soldiers of reason: the Rand Corporation and the rise of the American empire . Mariner Books, Boston 2009, ISBN 978-0-15-603344-2 , pp. 74 .
personal data
SURNAME McKinsey, John Charles Chenoweth
ALTERNATIVE NAMES McKinsey, JCC; McKinsey, Chen
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American mathematician and logician
DATE OF BIRTH 1908
DATE OF DEATH October 26, 1953
Place of death Palo Alto