Leon Henkin

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Leon Henkin, Berkeley 1990

Leon Albert Henkin (born April 19, 1921 in Brooklyn , † November 1, 2006 in Oakland ) was an American logician .

Life

Henkin was the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants and studied mathematics and philosophy at Columbia College, Columbia University (Master's degree in 1942). During World War II he worked on radar research with the US Army Signal Corps and the Manhattan project (isotope separation in Oak Ridge). After the war he received his doctorate in 1947 from Alonzo Church at Princeton University ( The completeness of formal systems ). From 1953 he was at the University of California, Berkeley , where he became a professor. In 1961/62 he was at the Institute for Advanced Study and 1968/69 at All Souls College , Oxford .

Henkin is best known for his proof of Gödel's completeness theorem of first order logic (proved by Kurt Gödel in his dissertation in 1929, see Henkin's theorem ). He first proved the completeness of Church's higher level logics , introducing Henkin models, and then extended that to first level logics. He also developed Henkin semantics for 2nd level logics named after him and worked with Alfred Tarski ( Cylindric Algebras ). He was also active in mathematics didactics and in promoting minority mathematics students.

In 1954/55 he was a Fulbright Fellow and 1961/62 Guggenheim Fellow. In 1964 he received the Chauvenet Prize for Are logic and mathematics identical? and in 1991 the University's Berkeley Citation. In 1990 he received the Gung and Hu Award and in 1972 the Lester R. Ford Prize for Mathematical foundations for mathematics .

Carol Karp is one of Henkin's PhD students .

Fonts

  • The Completeness of the First-Order Functional Calculus , Journal of Symbolic Logic 14, 1949, pp. 159-166
  • Completeness in the theory of types , Journal of Symbolic Logic 15, 1950, pp. 81-91
  • Are logic and mathematics identical? , Science 138, 1962, pp. 788-794
  • Mathematical foundations for mathematics , The American Mathematical Monthly 78, 1971, pp. 463–487 (at MathDL: [1] )
  • with James Donald Monk and Alfred Tarski : Cylindric Algebras , North-Holland, Amsterdam 1971 (part 1) 1985 (part 2), ISBN 0720420431 (part 1) ISBN 0444876790 (part 2)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Completeness of the First-Order Functional Calculus , 1949 and Completeness in the theory of types , 1950
personal data
SURNAME Henkin, Leon
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Henkin, Leon Albert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American logician
DATE OF BIRTH April 19, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Brooklyn
DATE OF DEATH November 1, 2006
Place of death Oakland