Moses El'evich Schönfinkel | |
|---|---|
.jpg) c.1922 | |
| Born | (1888-09-29)29 September 1888 |
| Died | 1942 (aged 53–54) |
| Citizenship | Russian |
| Alma mater | Novorossiysk University |
| Known for | Combinatory logic Technique for binding arguments Bernays–Schönfinkel class |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | University of Göttingen |
Moses Ilyich Schönfinkel (Russian:Моисей Эльевич Шейнфинкель,romanized: Moisei El'evich Sheinfinkel; 29 September 1888 – 1942 (1943)) was alogician andmathematician, known for the invention ofcombinatory logic.
Moses Schönfinkel was born on(1888-09-29)29 September 1888 in Ekaterinoslav, Russian Empire (now Dnipro, Ukraine).[1] He was born to aJewish family. His father was Ilya Girshevich Schönfinkel, a merchant of first guild, who was in а grocery store trade, and his mother, Maria “Masha” Gertsovna Schönfinkel (née Lurie) came from a prominentLurie family. Moses had siblings named Deborah, Natan, Israel and Grigoriy.[2] Schönfinkel attended theNovorossiysk University ofOdessa, studyingmathematics underSamuil Osipovich Shatunovskii (1859–1929), who worked ingeometry and thefoundations of mathematics. From 1914 to 1924, Schönfinkel was a member ofDavid Hilbert's group at theUniversity of Göttingen inGermany.[3] On 7 December 1920 he delivered a talk entitledElemente der Logik ("Elements of Logic") to the group where he outlined the concept ofcombinatory logic.Heinrich Behmann, a member of Hilbert's group, later revised the text and published it in 1924.[4] In 1928, Schönfinkel had one other paper published, on special cases of the decision problem (Entscheidungsproblem), that was prepared byPaul Bernays.[5]
After he left Göttingen, Schönfinkel returned to Moscow. By 1927 he was reported to be mentally ill and in a sanatorium.[4][5] His later life was spent in poverty, and he died in Moscow some time in 1942 (aged 53–54) . His papers were burned by his neighbors for heating.[5]
Schönfinkel developed a formal system that avoided the use ofbound variables. His system was essentially equivalent to a combinatory logic based upon the combinatorsB,C,I,K,S and a combinator for a universally quantifiednand function which he calledU. Schönfinkel stated that the system could be reduced to justK,S, andU (a colleague stated thatU could be factored to the end of any expression and thus not always explicitly written) and outlined a proof that a version of this system had the same power aspredicate logic.[4]
His paper also showed that functions of two or more arguments could be replaced by functions taking a single argument.[6][7][8] This replacement mechanism simplifies work in both combinatory logic andlambda calculus and would later be calledcurrying, afterHaskell Curry. While Curry attributed the concept to Schönfinkel, it had already been used byFrege[9] (an example ofStigler's law).
The complete known published output of Schönfinkel consists of just two papers: his 1924On the Building Blocks of Mathematical Logic, and another, 31-page paper written in 1927 and published 1928, coauthored with Paul Bernays, entitledZum Entscheidungsproblem der mathematischen Logik (On the Decision Problem of Mathematical Logic).
English translation:Schönfinkel (1967)
A celebration of the development of combinators, a hundred years after they were introduced bySchönfinkel (1924)(eBook:ISBN 978-1-57955-044-8)
Media related toMoses Schönfinkel at Wikimedia CommonsBiographical information
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