Talk:Moses Schönfinkel

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William Hatcher, while spending time in St Petersburg during the 1990s, was told by Soviet mathematicians that Schonfinkel died in wretched poverty, having no job and but one room in a collective apartment. After his death, the rough ordinary people who shared his apartment burned his manuscripts for fuel (WWII was raging). The few Soviet mathematicians around 1940 who had any discussions with Schonfinkel later said that those mss reinvented a great deal of 20th century mathematical logic. Schonfinkel had no way of accessing the work of Turing, Church, and Tarski, but had derived their results for himself. Stalin did not order Schonfinkel shot or deported to Siberia, but blame for Schonfinkel's death and inability to publish in his final years can be placed on Stalin's doorstep.202.36.179.65 06:50, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

This is plausible, and may well be true, however, we have three hearsay links here: anonymous editor User:202.36.179.65 reported that William Hatcher reported that unnamed "Soviet mathematicians" reported that Schonfinkel had derived certain results. I have not found William Hatcher's report in any of the easy places (Google, Google Scholar, Google Books); could we at least get a solid citation for that? Otherwise, we don't really have anything even remotely resembling a reliable source, do we? Thanks. --Macrakis 20:39, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

In the biography of H.B. Curry in Seldin and Hindley's "To H.B. Curry: Essays on Combinatory Logic, Lambda Calculus and Formalism" it's mentioned that in the late 20's Schoenfinkel was in a mental institution, does anyone know any more about this? Antic-Hay (talk) 21:00, 11 February 2008 (UTC)