Richard Statman (born September 6, 1946) is an American
computer scientist
A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science.
Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus ( ...
whose principal research interest is the
theory of computation
In theoretical computer science and mathematics, the theory of computation is the branch that deals with what problems can be solved on a model of computation, using an algorithm, how efficiently they can be solved or to what degree (e.g., ...
, especially symbolic computation. His research involves
lambda calculus
Lambda calculus (also written as ''λ''-calculus) is a formal system in mathematical logic for expressing computation based on function abstraction and application using variable binding and substitution. It is a universal model of computation t ...
,
type theory
In mathematics, logic, and computer science, a type theory is the formal system, formal presentation of a specific type system, and in general type theory is the academic study of type systems. Some type theories serve as alternatives to set theor ...
, and
combinatory algebra.
Career
In 1974, Statman received his
Ph.D. from
Stanford University for his Ph.D. dissertation, supervised by
Georg Kreisel
Georg Kreisel FRS (September 15, 1923 – March 1, 2015) was an Austrian-born mathematical logician who studied and worked in the United Kingdom and America.
Biography
Kreisel was born in Graz and came from a Jewish background; his fami ...
, entitled ''Structural Complexity of Proofs''. His achievements include the proof that the
type inhabitation problem In type theory, a branch of mathematical logic, in a given typed calculus, the type inhabitation problem for this calculus is the following problem: given a type \tau and a typing environment \Gamma, does there exist a \lambda-term M such that \Gamm ...
in
simply typed lambda calculus
The simply typed lambda calculus (\lambda^\to), a form
of type theory, is a typed interpretation of the lambda calculus with only one type constructor (\to) that builds function types. It is the canonical and simplest example of a typed lambda ...
is
PSPACE-complete In computational complexity theory, a decision problem is PSPACE-complete if it can be solved using an amount of memory that is polynomial in the input length ( polynomial space) and if every other problem that can be solved in polynomial space can ...
.
External links
Carnegie Mellon profile
{{DEFAULTSORT:Statman, Richard
American computer scientists
Living people
1946 births