Gerhard Gentzen
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Gerhard Karl Erich Gentzen (November 24, 1909 – August 4, 1945) was a German mathematician and logician.
Gentzen was born in Greifswald, Germany. He was one of Hermann Weyl's students at the University of Göttingen from 1929 to 1933. Gentzen's main work was on the foundations of mathematics, in proof theory, specifically natural deduction and the sequent calculus. His cut-elimination theorem is the cornerstone of proof-theoretic semantics, and some philosophical remarks in his "Investigations into Logical Deduction", together with Ludwig Wittgenstein's aphorism that "meaning is use", constitute the starting point for inferential role semantics. He proved the consistency of the Peano axioms in 1936.
Gentzen starved to death in a prisoner's camp close to Prague, after being arrested due to his Nazi loyalties.[citation needed] He was a member of the NSDAP and the SA.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Eckart Menzler-Trott. Gentzens Problem: Mathematische Logik im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland. Birkhäuser Verlag, 2001. ISBN 3-7643-6574-9. An English translation is planned.
- M. E. Szabo. Collected Papers of Gerhard Gentzen. North-Holland, 1969.
- Gentzen, Gerhard, "Die Widerspruchsfreiheit der reinen Zahlentheorie", Mathematische Annalen, 112: 493-565.(1936)
[edit] External links
- O'Connor, John J., and Edmund F. Robertson. "Gerhard Gentzen". MacTutor History of Mathematics archive.
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