Mathematician:Paul Joseph Cohen

Mathematician

American mathematician working in logic and set theory.

Best known for his work on the Continuum Hypothesis.

Fields Medal

Paul Joseph Cohen was awarded a Fields Medal in $\text {1966}$ at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Moscow, Russia:

Used technique called "forcing" to prove the independence in set theory of the axiom of choice and of the generalized continuum hypothesis. The latter problem was the first of Hilbert's problems of the $1900$ Congress.

Nationality

American

History

• Born: 2 April 1934 in Long Branch, New Jersey, USA
• Died: 23 March 2007 in Palo Alto, California, USA

Theorems and Definitions

• Continuum Hypothesis

Publications

• 1959: Factorization in Group Algebras
• 1960: On a conjecture of Littlewood and Idempotent Measures (Amer. J. Math. Vol. 82: pp. 191 – 212)
• 1963: Independence results in set theory (The Theory of Models ) (edited by J.W. Addison, L. Henkin and A. Tarski)
• 1963: The Independence of the Continuum Hypothesis (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U S A Vol. 50: pp. 1143 – 1148)
• 1964: The Independence of the Continuum Hypothesis II (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U S A Vol. 51: pp. 105 – 110)

• 1966: Set Theory and the Continuum Hypothesis
  • 2008: Set Theory and the Continuum Hypothesis, republished ed.

Sources

• John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson: "Paul Joseph Cohen": MacTutor History of Mathematics archive

• 1998: David Nelson: The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (2nd ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): Cohen, Paul Joseph (1934- $\ $)
• 2008: David Nelson: The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (4th ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): Cohen, Paul Joseph (1934-2007)