Alonzo Church facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Alonzo Church
|
|
|---|---|
Alonzo Church (1903–1995)
|
|
| Born | June 14, 1903 Washington, D.C., US
|
| Died | August 11, 1995 (aged 92) Hudson, Ohio, US
|
| Citizenship | United States |
| Alma mater | Princeton University |
| Known for | Lambda calculus Simply typed lambda calculus Church encoding Church's theorem Church–Kleene ordinal Church–Turing thesis Frege–Church ontology Church–Rosser theorem Intensional logic |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics, logic |
| Institutions | Princeton University (1929–67) UCLA (1967–95) |
| Thesis | Alternatives to Zermelo's Assumption (1927) |
| Doctoral advisor | Oswald Veblen |
| Doctoral students | C. Anthony Anderson, 1977 Peter Andrews, 1964 George Alfred Barnard, 1936 William W. Boone, 1952 Martin Davis, 1950 William Easton, 1964 Alfred Foster, 1930< Leon Henkin, 1947 John George Kemeny, 1949 Stephen Cole Kleene, 1934 Simon B. Kochen, 1959 Maurice L'Abbé, 1951 Isaac Malitz, 1976 Gary R. Mar, 1985 Michael O. Rabin, 1957< Nicholas Rescher, 1951 Hartley Rogers, Jr, 1952 J. Barkley Rosser, 1934 Dana Scott, 1958 Norman Shapiro, 1955 Raymond Smullyan, 1959 Alan Turing, 1938 |
Alonzo Church (June 14, 1903 – August 11, 1995) was an American mathematician, computer scientist, logician, and philosopher. He made very important contributions to mathematical logic and the basics of theoretical computer science.
He is famous for inventing the lambda calculus. This is a way to study how computers can calculate things. He also helped create the Church-Turing thesis. This idea explains what can and cannot be solved by computers. Alonzo Church is seen as one of the people who started the field of computer science, along with his student Alan Turing.
Contents
Life Story
Alonzo Church was born in Washington, D.C. on June 14, 1903. His father, Samuel Robbins Church, was a judge. When Alonzo was a young boy, he had an accident with an air gun that partly damaged his eyesight.
His family later moved to Virginia. With help from his uncle, also named Alonzo Church, he went to a private school called Ridgefield School for Boys. He finished school in 1920.
College and Early Career
After high school, Church went to Princeton University. He was a brilliant student there. In 1924, he published his first paper on Lorentz transformations. He earned his degree in mathematics that same year. He continued his studies at Princeton and got his Ph.D. in mathematics in just three years. His teacher was Oswald Veblen.
In 1925, he married Mary Julia Kuczinski. They had three children: Alonzo Jr., Mary Ann, and Mildred.
After getting his Ph.D., he taught for a short time at the University of Chicago. He then received a special fellowship. This allowed him to study at Harvard University in 1927–1928. He also studied in Europe at the University of Göttingen and University of Amsterdam.
Teaching and Later Years
Alonzo Church taught philosophy and mathematics at Princeton for almost 40 years, from 1929 to 1967. Later, he became a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He taught there from 1967 to 1990.
He received special honorary degrees from several universities. These included Case Western Reserve University and Princeton University. He was also chosen to be a member of important groups like the National Academy of Sciences.
Alonzo Church was a religious person and a member of the Presbyterian church. He passed away on August 11, 1995, when he was 92 years old. He is buried in Princeton Cemetery.
Important Math Work
Alonzo Church is famous for several big achievements in mathematics and computer science:
- Solving the Entscheidungsproblem: He proved that there's no general way for a computer to decide if any math statement is true or false. This is known as Church's theorem.
- Inventing the Lambda Calculus: This is a special system he created. It helps describe how functions work and how to compute things. It's a key idea in computer science.
- Church-Turing Thesis: He helped create this important idea. It says that anything a human can calculate using a step-by-step method can also be calculated by a computer.
- Founding Editor: He was one of the first editors of the Journal of Symbolic Logic. He helped edit it for 43 years!
- Writing a Textbook: He wrote a very important textbook called "Introduction to Mathematical Logic". Many students used it for a long time.
- The Church–Rosser Theorem: This theorem is about the lambda calculus. It shows that if you have a calculation, it will always end up with the same result, no matter how you do the steps.
Church and Turing
Church's work on the lambda calculus helped show that some problems cannot be solved by computers. This was before Alan Turing did his famous work on the halting problem. When Turing heard about Church's ideas, he came to Princeton to study with Church.
Together, Church and Turing showed that the lambda calculus and Turing's "Turing machine" were equally powerful. This means they could solve the same kinds of problems. This led to the important Church-Turing thesis.
Impact on Programming
The lambda calculus greatly influenced how programming languages are designed. It was especially important for languages like Lisp and other functional programming languages. The idea of Church encoding is also named after him.
In 2015, the Alonzo Church Award was created in his honor. This award recognizes amazing contributions to logic and computing.
Ideas on Philosophy
Alonzo Church also worked on philosophy. He is known for the Frege–Church ontology. This idea is based on the philosophical thoughts of Gottlob Frege. It deals with how we understand meaning and existence in language and logic.
His Influence
Alonzo Church was a teacher to many students. He guided 31 students who were getting their Ph.D. Many of these students became very successful mathematicians and computer scientists. Some of his famous students include Alan Turing, Stephen Cole Kleene, and Martin Davis.
Even people who weren't his direct students were influenced by him. Haskell Curry, another famous mathematician, said that Church's textbook was written with amazing care and detail.
See Also
In Spanish: Alonzo Church para niños
- Church–Turing–Deutsch principle
- Higher-order logic
- List of pioneers in computer science
- Platonism#Modern Platonism
- Universal set
