Martin David Davis (March 8, 1928 – January 1, 2023) was an American mathematician, known for his work on
Hilbert's tenth problem
Hilbert's tenth problem is the tenth on the list of mathematical problems that the German mathematician David Hilbert posed in 1900. It is the challenge to provide a general algorithm which, for any given Diophantine equation (a polynomial equati ...
.
[.]
Biography
Davis's parents were Jewish immigrants to the US from
Łódź
Łódź, also rendered in English as Lodz, is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located approximately south-west of Warsaw. The city's coat of arms is an example of cant ...
,
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...
, and married after they met again in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
. Davis grew up in the
Bronx
The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...
, where his parents encouraged him to obtain a full education.
Davis received his Ph.D. from
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nin ...
in 1950, where his advisor was
Alonzo Church
Alonzo Church (June 14, 1903 – August 11, 1995) was an American mathematician, computer scientist, logician, philosopher, professor and editor who made major contributions to mathematical logic and the foundations of theoretical computer scien ...
.
During a research instructorship at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Universi ...
in the early 1950s, he joined the ''Control Systems Lab'' and became one of the early programmers of the
ORDVAC
The ORDVAC (''Ordnance Discrete Variable Automatic Computer)'', is an early computer built by the University of Illinois for the Ballistic Research Laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Ground. A successor to the ENIAC (along with EDVAC built earlier). ...
.
He was
Professor Emeritus
''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...
at
New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.
In 1832, t ...
.
Davis died on January 1, 2023, at the age of 94.
Contributions
Davis was the co-inventor of the
Davis–Putnam algorithm and the
DPLL algorithm
In logic and computer science, the Davis–Putnam–Logemann–Loveland (DPLL) algorithm is a complete, backtracking-based search algorithm for deciding the satisfiability of propositional logic formulae in conjunctive normal form, i.e. for solv ...
s. He is also known for his model of
Post–Turing machine
A Post–Turing machineRajendra Kumar, ''Theory of Automata'', Tata McGraw-Hill Education, 2010, p. 343. is a "program formulation" of a type of Turing machine, comprising a variant of Emil Post's Turing-equivalent model of computation. Post's mo ...
s, and his work on
Hilbert's tenth problem
Hilbert's tenth problem is the tenth on the list of mathematical problems that the German mathematician David Hilbert posed in 1900. It is the challenge to provide a general algorithm which, for any given Diophantine equation (a polynomial equati ...
leading to the
MRDP theorem
In mathematics, a Diophantine equation is an equation of the form ''P''(''x''1, ..., ''x'j'', ''y''1, ..., ''y'k'') = 0 (usually abbreviated ''P''(', ') = 0) where ''P''(', ') is a polynomial with integer coefficients, where ''x''1, ..., ' ...
.
Awards and honors
In 1975, Davis won the
Leroy P. Steele Prize
The Leroy P. Steele Prizes are awarded every year by the American Mathematical Society, for distinguished research work and writing in the field of mathematics. Since 1993, there has been a formal division into three categories.
The prizes have ...
, the
Chauvenet Prize
The Chauvenet Prize is the highest award for mathematical expository writing. It consists of a prize of $1,000 and a certificate, and is awarded yearly by the Mathematical Association of America in recognition of an outstanding expository article ...
(with
Reuben Hersh
Reuben Hersh (December 9, 1927 – January 3, 2020) was an American mathematician and academic, best known for his writings on the nature, practice, and social impact of mathematics. Although he was generally known as Reuben Hersh, late in life ...
),
and in 1974 the
Lester R. Ford Award for his expository writing related to his work on Hilbert's tenth problem.
He became a
fellow
A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context.
In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements.
Within the context of higher education ...
of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) 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 ...
in 1982,
and in 2012, he was selected as one of the inaugural fellows of the
American Mathematical Society
The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...
.
List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society
retrieved 2014-03-17.
Selected publications
;Books
*
1982 Dover reprint
*
2014 Dover reprint
*
* . Reprinted as
;Articles
* Davis, Martin (1973), "Hilbert's Tenth Problem is Unsolvable", ''American Mathematical Monthly'', 80(3), 233–269.
* Davis, Martin (1995), "Is mathematical insight algorithmic?", ''Behavioral and Brain Sciences'', 13(4), 659–60.
* Davis, Martin (2020), "Seventy Years of Computer Science", In: Blass A., Cégielski P., Dershowitz N., Droste M., Finkbeiner B. (eds.) ''Fields of Logic and Computation III'', 105–117. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 12180. Springer: Cham, Switzerland.
See also
* Criticism of non-standard analysis
*Halting problem
In computability theory, the halting problem is the problem of determining, from a description of an arbitrary computer program and an input, whether the program will finish running, or continue to run forever. Alan Turing proved in 1936 that a g ...
*Influence of non-standard analysis Abraham Robinson's theory of nonstandard analysis has been applied in a number of fields.
Probability theory
"Radically elementary probability theory" of Edward Nelson combines the discrete and the continuous theory through the infinitesimal appr ...
References
External links
*
Martin Davis' website
Celebrating Emil Post & His "Intractable Problem" of Tag: 100 Years Later
on YouTube
YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second most vis ...
, including contributions by Martin Davis (from 1 hour 39 minutes in the recording)
1928 births
2023 deaths
20th-century American mathematicians
21st-century American mathematicians
Number theorists
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Fellows of the American Mathematical Society
20th-century American Jews
American logicians
Princeton University alumni
Institute for Advanced Study visiting scholars
Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences faculty
New York University faculty
Scientists from the Bronx
21st-century American Jews
American people of Polish-Jewish descent
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