Grigori Mints (June 7, 1939 – May 29, 2014) was a Russian

philosopher Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

and

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

who worked in

mathematical logic Mathematical logic is the study of Logic#Formal logic, formal logic within mathematics. Major subareas include model theory, proof theory, set theory, and recursion theory (also known as computability theory). Research in mathematical logic com ...

. He was born in

Leningrad Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

, in the Soviet Union (now

St. Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city had a population of 5,601, ...

, Russia), and received his Ph.D. in 1965 from the

Leningrad State University Saint Petersburg State University (SPBGU; ) is a public research university in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in Russia. Founded in 1724 by a decree of Peter the Great, the university from the be ...

under Nikolai Aleksandrovich Shanin with a thesis entitled "On Predicate and Operator Variants for Building Theories of Constructive Mathematics". In 1990 he received his D.Sc. from

with a thesis entitled "Proof Transformations and Synthesis of Programs". He was a

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

. Since 1991, Grigori "Grisha" Mints was a professor of philosophy and, by courtesy, of mathematics and of computer science at Stanford University. Before joining Stanford, Mints held research positions at the

Steklov Mathematical Institute Steklov Institute of Mathematics or Steklov Mathematical Institute () is a premier research institute based in Moscow, specialized in mathematics, and a part of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The institute is named after Vladimir Andreevich Ste ...

Leningrad University Saint Petersburg State University (SPBGU; ) is a public university, public research university in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in Russia. Founded in 1724 by a decree of Peter the Great, the uni ...

, and the

Estonian Academy of Sciences Founded in 1938, the Estonian Academy of Sciences (, ) is Estonia's national academy of science in Tallinn. As with other national academies, it is an independent group of well-known scientists whose stated aim is to promote research and develo ...

. Considered one of the most distinguished logicians in the world, Mints was passionate about the applications of logic to philosophy. His expertise was in

proof theory Proof theory is a major branchAccording to , proof theory is one of four domains mathematical logic, together with model theory, axiomatic set theory, and recursion theory. consists of four corresponding parts, with part D being about "Proof The ...

– the analysis of the structure of mathematical reasoning. Mints was elected to the

in 2008 and to the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...

in 2010. Mints was a very active member of the steering committee of the WoLLIC series of workshops on logic and language, after having been a member of the community in several capacities such as invited speaker, PC member, PC chair, Organising Committee chair, guest editor of proceedings and special issue, and steering committee member.

Selected publications

*Mints, G. (2013) Epsilon substitution for first- and second-order predicate logic. "Ann. Pure Appl. Logic" 164(6): 733-739. *Mints, G., Olkhovikov, G.V., Urquhart, A. (2013) Failure of interpolation in constant domain intuitionistic logic. "J. Symb. Log." 78(3): 937-950. *Mints, G. (2013) ADC Method of Proof Search for Intuitionistic Propositional Natural Deduction. To appear in a "Festsschrift for A. Avron". *Mints, G. (2012) Effective Cut-elimination for a Fragment of Modal mu-calculus. "Studia Logica" 100(1-2): 279-287. *Mints, G. (2010) Cut-free formulations for a quantified logic of here and there. "Ann. Pure Appl. Logic" 162(3): 237-242. *Mints, G. (2008) Cut elimination for a simple formulation of epsilon calculus. "Ann. Pure Appl. Logic" 152(1-3): 148-160. *Mints, G. (2006) Notes on constructive negation. in R. Kahle and P. Schroeder-Heister (eds.), "Proof-Theoretic Semantics", special issue of "Synthese", 2006, 148, issue 3, pp. 701–717. *Mints, G. (2006) Cut Elimination for a Simple Formulation of PAepsilon. "Electr. Notes Theor. Comput. Sci." 143: 159-169. *Mints, G. (2006) S4 is Topologically Complete for (0, 1): a Short Proof. "Logic Journal of the IGPL" 14(1): 63-71. *Mints, G. (2006) Cut Elimination for S4C: A Case Study. "Studia Logica" 82(1): 121-132. *Mints, G. & Zhang, T. (2005) Propositional logic of continuous transformations in Cantor space. "Arch. Math. Log." 44(6): 783-799. *Kremer, Ph. & Mints, G. (2005) Dynamic topological logic. "Ann. Pure Appl. Logic" 131(1-3): 133-158. *Mints, G. & Zhang, T. (2005) A proof of topological completeness for S4 in (0, 1). "Ann. Pure Appl. Logic" 133(1-3): 231-245. *Tatsuta, M. & Mints, G. (2005) A simple proof of second-order strong normalization with permutative conversions. "Ann. Pure Appl. Logic" 136(1-2): 134-155 *Mints, G. & Muskens, R. (eds.) (2003) "Games, Logic, and Constructive Sets". Published by Center for the Study of Language and Information - Lecture Notes (Book 161), 2003. *Mints, G. (2001) "A Short Introduction to Intuitionistic Logic" (University Series in Mathematics). Published by Kluwer Academic Publisher, 2001. *Mints, G. (1992) "A Short Introduction to Modal Logic". Published by Center for the Study of Language and Information - Lecture Notes (Book 30), 1992. * ''Selected Papers in Proof Theory'' (North-Holland), August 1992, , Studies in Proof Theory series) *Mints, G. & Martin-Löf, P. (eds.) (1990) "COLOG-88: International Conference on Computer Logic", Tallinn, USSR, December 12–16, 1988, Proceedings - Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Vol. 417), 1990.

References

External links

Grigori Mints official website
at

Tributes to Grigori Mints
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mints, Grigori 1939 births 2014 deaths 21st-century Russian mathematicians Russian logicians 20th-century Russian philosophers 21st-century Russian philosophers Mathematical logicians Historians of mathematics Stanford University Department of Philosophy faculty Philosophers of mathematics