Mathematician:Alonzo Church

Mathematician

American mathematician who pioneered in the field of computability theory and the foundations of computer science.

Best known for his lambda calculus, Church's Theorem and Church's Thesis.

Nationality

American

History

• Born: June 14, 1903
• Died: August 11, 1995

Theorems and Definitions

• Lambda Calculus
• Church's Theorem
• Church's Thesis (otherwise known as the Church-Turing Thesis, with Alan Turing)
• Church-Turing-Deutsch Principle (a stronger version of the Church-Turing Thesis formulated by David Elieser Deutsch)
• Church-Rosser Theorem (with John Barkley Rosser Sr.)

Results named for Alonzo Church can be found here.

Definitions of concepts named for Alonzo Church can be found here.

Publications

• 1925: On irredundant sets of postulates
• 1926: On the form of differential equations of a system of paths

• 1927: Alternatives to Zermelo's assumption (Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. Vol. 27: pp. 178 – 208) (in which appeared his Ph.D dissertation)

• 1932: A set of Postulates for the Foundation of Logic (Ann. Math. Vol. 32, no. 33: pp. 346 – 366)

• 1936: Founded the Journal of Symbolic Logic which he edited till 1979

• March 1936: A Note on the Entscheidungsproblem (Journal of Symbolic Logic Vol. 1, no. 1: pp. 40 – 41) (in which Church's Theorem is presented)  www.jstor.org/stable/2269326

• May 1936: Some properties of conversion (Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. Vol. 39, no. 3: pp. 472 – 482) (with J.B. Rosser) (in which Church-Rosser Theorem is presented)  www.jstor.org/stable/1989762

• 1936: An Unsolvable Problem of Elementary Number Theory (Amer. J. Math. Vol. 58: pp. 345 – 363) (in which Church's Thesis is presented)

• 1940: On the concept of a random sequence
• 1940: A formulation of the simple theory of types
• 1941: The Calculi of Lambda-Conversion

• 1944: Introduction to Mathematical Logic
  • 1956: Introduction to Mathematical Logic (expanded edition)

• 1951: A formulation of the logic of sense and denotation
• 1965: Remarks on the elementary theory of differential equations as area of research
• 1966: A generalization of Laplace's transformation
• 1971: Set theory with a universal set (a variant of ZF-type axiomatic set theory)
• 1976: Comparison of Russell's resolution of the semantical antinomies with that of Tarski

Sources

• John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson: "Alonzo Church": MacTutor History of Mathematics archive

• 1998: David Nelson: The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (2nd ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): Church, Alonzo (1903-95)
• 2008: David Nelson: The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (4th ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): Church, Alonzo (1903-95)