- Gerhard Gentzen
Gerhard Karl Erich Gentzen (
November 24 ,1909 ,Greifswald ,Germany –August 4 ,1945 ,Prague ,Czechoslovakia ) was a Germanmathematician andlogician .He was one of
Hermann Weyl 's students at theUniversity of Göttingen from 1929 to 1933. Gentzen's main work was on the foundations ofmathematics , inproof theory , specificallynatural deduction and thesequent calculus . Hiscut-elimination theorem is the cornerstone ofproof-theoretic semantics , and some philosophical remarks in his "Investigations into Logical Deduction", together withLudwig Wittgenstein 's aphorism that "meaning is use", constitute the starting point forinferential role semantics . He proved the consistency of thePeano axioms in 1936.Gentzen was a member of the NSDAP and the SA. Between 1934 and 1943 he was assistant of
David Hilbert in Göttingen. Since 1943 he was a professor at theUniversity of Prague . [ [http://math.muni.cz/math/biografie/gerhard_gentzen.html Gerhard Gentzen ] at math.muni.cz] After war he starved to death inPrague , after being arrested like all other Germans in Prague on May 7, 1945. [Menzler-Trott, p. 273 ff.]Work
* "Die Widerspruchsfreiheit der reinen Zahlentheorie". In Mathematische Annalen 112 (1936): 493-565
See also
*
Gentzen's consistency proof
*Cut-elimination theorem Notes
References
* Eckart Menzler-Trott: "Gentzens Problem: Mathematische Logik im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland". Birkhäuser Verlag 2001, ISBN 3-7643-6574-9
** Edward Griffor and Craig Smorynski (trans.): "Logic's Lost Genius: The Life of Gerhard Gentzen (History of Mathematics, vol. 33)". American Mathematical Society 2007, ISBN 978-0821835500 ("an English translation")
* M. E. Szabo: "Collected Papers of Gerhard Gentzen". North-Holland 1969External links
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