Alonzo Church (June 14, 1903 – August 11, 1995) was an American
computer scientist,
mathematician,
logician, and
philosopher who made major contributions to
mathematical logic and the foundations of
theoretical computer science. He is best known for the
lambda calculus, the
Church–Turing thesis, proving the unsolvability of the ''
Entscheidungsproblem
In mathematics and computer science, the ; ) is a challenge posed by David Hilbert and Wilhelm Ackermann in 1928. It asks for an algorithm that considers an inputted statement and answers "yes" or "no" according to whether it is universally valid ...
'' ("decision problem"), the
Frege–Church ontology, and the
Church–Rosser theorem. Alongside his doctoral student
Alan Turing, Church is considered one of the founders of
computer science
Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...
.
Life
Alonzo Church was born on June 14, 1903, in
Washington, D.C., where his father, Samuel Robbins Church, was a
justice of the peace and the judge of the Municipal Court for the District of Columbia. He was the grandson of Alonzo Webster Church (1829–1909),
United States Senate Librarian from 1881 to 1901, and great-grandson of
Alonzo Church, a professor of Mathematics and Astronomy and 6th President of the University of Georgia. As a young boy, Church was partially blinded by an air gun accident. The family later moved to Virginia after his father lost his position at the university because of failing eyesight. With help from his uncle, also named Alonzo Church, the son attended the private Ridgefield School for Boys in
Ridgefield, Connecticut. After graduating from Ridgefield in 1920, Church attended Princeton University, where he was an exceptional student. He published his first paper on
Lorentz transformations in 1924 and graduated the same year with a degree in mathematics. He stayed at Princeton for graduate work, earning a
Ph.D. in mathematics in three years under
Oswald Veblen.
He married Mary Julia Kuczinski in 1925. The couple had three children: Alonzo Jr. (1929), Mary Ann (1933), and Mildred (1938).
After receiving his Ph.D., he taught briefly as an instructor at the
University of Chicago. He received a two-year
National Research Fellowship that enabled him to attend
Harvard University
Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...
in 1927–1928, and the
University of Göttingen and
University of Amsterdam the following year.
He taught philosophy and mathematics at
Princeton for nearly four decades, from 1929 to 1967. He held the Flint Professorship of Philosophy and Mathematics at the
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school the ...
, 1967–1990.
He was a Plenary Speaker at the
ICM in 1962 in Stockholm.
He received honorary Doctor of Science degrees from
Case Western Reserve University in 1969, Princeton University in 1985, and the
University at Buffalo, The State University of New York in 1990 in connection with an international symposium in his honor organized by
John Corcoran.
He was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the
British Academy (FBA) in 1966, to the
American Academy of the Arts and Sciences in 1967, to the
National Academy of Sciences in 1978.
Church was a lifelong member of the
Presbyterian church. He died on August 11, 1995, at the age of 92. He is buried in
Princeton Cemetery.
Mathematical work
Church is known for the following accomplishments:
* His proof that the
Entscheidungsproblem
In mathematics and computer science, the ; ) is a challenge posed by David Hilbert and Wilhelm Ackermann in 1928. It asks for an algorithm that considers an inputted statement and answers "yes" or "no" according to whether it is universally valid ...
, which asks for a
decision procedure to determine the truth of arbitrary propositions in a first-order mathematical
theory, is
undecidable. This is known as
Church's theorem.
* His invention of the
lambda calculus.
* His use of the lambda calculus to prove that
Peano arithmetic is undecidable.
* His articulation of what has come to be known as the
Church–Turing thesis.
* Being a founding editor of the ''
Journal of Symbolic Logic'', editing its reviews section for 43 years from 1936 until 1979.
* His authorship of a prominent textbook in the field of mathematical logic, ''Introduction to Mathematical Logic''.
* The
Church–Rosser theorem
The lambda calculus emerged in his 1936 paper showing the unsolvability of the Entscheidungsproblem. This result preceded Alan Turing's work on the
halting problem, which also demonstrated the existence of a problem unsolvable by mechanical means. Upon hearing of Church's work, Turing enrolled at Princeton later that year under Church for a Ph.D. Church and Turing then showed that the lambda calculus and the
Turing machine
A Turing machine is a mathematical model of computation describing an abstract machine that manipulates symbols on a strip of tape according to a table of rules. Despite the model's simplicity, it is capable of implementing any computer algori ...
used in Turing's halting problem were equivalent in capabilities, and subsequently demonstrated a variety of alternative "mechanical processes for computation." This resulted in the Church–Turing thesis.
The efforts for automatically generating a controller implementation from specifications originates from his ideas.
The lambda calculus influenced the design of
Lisp and
functional programming languages in general. The
Church encoding is named in his honor.
In his honor the Alonzo Church Award for Outstanding Contributions to Logic and Computation was established in 2015 by the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group for Logic and Computation (
ACM SIGLOG), the
European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS), the European Association for Computer Science Logic (
EACSL), and the
Kurt Gödel Society (KGS). The award is for an outstanding contribution to the field published within the past 25 years and must not yet have received recognition via another major award, such as the
Turing Award, the
Paris Kanellakis Award, or the
Gödel Prize.
Church also made contributions to the
theory of random sequences.
Philosophical work
Church is also known for the
Frege–Church ontology, which he created based on the philosophical ideas of
Gottlob Frege. He is credited with formulating the Slingshot Argument, which suggests that sentential references must be truth-values, rather than propositions.
Influence
Over the course of his academic career, Church oversaw 31 doctoral students.
Many of them have led distinguished careers in mathematics, computer science, and other academic subjects, including
Peter B. Andrews,
George A. Barnard,
David Berlinski,
William W. Boone,
Martin Davis,
Alfred L. Foster,
Leon Henkin,
John G. Kemeny,
Stephen C. Kleene,
Simon B. Kochen,
Maurice L'Abbé,
Gary R. Mar,
Michael O. Rabin,
Nicholas Rescher,
Hartley Rogers, Jr.,
J. Barkley Rosser,
Dana Scott,
Raymond Smullyan and
Alan Turing.
In addition to those he directly supervised, Church also had a large influence on other mathematicians and computer scientists.
Haskell Curry, who expanded on Church's ideas with the concept of
currying, stated that one of his textbooks, Introduction to Mathematical Logic (first published in 1944), was "written with the meticulous precision which characterizes the author's work generally."
Bibliography
Books
* Alonzo Church, ''Introduction to Mathematical Logic'' (1944) ()
* Alonzo Church, ''The Calculi of Lambda-Conversion'' (1941) ()
* Alonzo Church, ''A Bibliography of Symbolic Logic, 1666–1935'' ()
* C. Anthony Anderson and Michael Zelëny, (eds.), ''Logic, Meaning and Computation: Essays in Memory of Alonzo Church'' ()
* Tyler Burge and Herbert Enderton (eds.), ''The Collected Works of Alonzo Church'' (2019) (ISBN 978-0-262-02564-5)
See also
*
Church–Turing–Deutsch principle
*
Higher-order logic
*
List of pioneers in computer science
*
Modern Platonism
*
Universal set
Notes
References
*
Enderton, Herbert B.Alonzo Church: Life and Work Introduction to ''The Collected Works of Alonzo Church'', MIT Press, 2019.
* Enderton, Herbert B.
In memoriam: Alonzo Church ''The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic'', vol. 1, no. 4 (Dec. 1995), pp. 486–488.
* Wade, Nicholas
(obituary), ''The New York Times'', September 5, 1995, p. B6.
*
Hodges, WilfredObituary: Alonzo Church ''The Independent (London)'', September 14, 1995.
interviewed by William Aspray on 17 May 1984. ''The Princeton Mathematics Community in the 1930s: An Oral-History Project'', transcript number 5.
*
Rota, Gian-CarloFine Hall in its golden age: Remembrances of Princeton in the early fifties In ''A Century of Mathematics in America, Part II'', edited by Peter Duren, AMS History of Mathematics, vol 2, American Mathematical Society, 1989, pp. 223–226. Also available
*
*
External links
*
* Princeton University Library, Manuscripts Division
The Alonzo Church Papers, 1924–1995: finding aid.*
*''
ttps://www.nytimes.com/1995/09/05/obituaries/alonzo-church-92-theorist-of-the-limits-of-mathematics.html Alonzo Church, 92, Theorist Of the Limits of Mathematics'
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
obituary
*
OBITUARY: Alonzo Church' from
The Independent
*
In memoriam: Alonzo Church (1903–1995)' by
Irving H. Anellis, ''Modern Logic'' Vol. 5, No. 4 (1995).
*
In memoriam: Alonzo Church 1903–1995' by H. B. Enderton, ''
The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic'' Vol. 1, No.5 (1995).
{{DEFAULTSORT:Church, Alonzo
1903 births
1995 deaths
20th-century American mathematicians
American logicians
American Presbyterians
Computability theorists
Princeton University alumni
Harvard University alumni
Princeton University faculty
University of California, Los Angeles faculty
Burials at Princeton Cemetery
Philosophers from Washington, D.C.
Philosophers from California
Philosophers from New Jersey
Mathematicians from Washington, D.C.
20th-century American philosophers
Corresponding fellows of the British Academy