American philosopher and mathematician
Solomon Feferman (December 13, 1928 – July 26, 2016)
[2] was an American
philosopher and
mathematician who worked in
mathematical logic . In addition to his prolific technical work in
proof theory ,
computability theory , and
set theory , he was known for his contributions to the
history of logic (for instance, via biographical writings on figures such as
Kurt Gödel ,
Alfred Tarski , and
Jean van Heijenoort ) and as a vocal proponent of the philosophy of mathematics known as
predicativism , notably from an anti-
platonist stance.
Life
Solomon Feferman was born in
The Bronx in
New York City to working-class parents who had immigrated to the United States after
World War I and had met and married in New York. Neither parent had any advanced education. The family moved to Los Angeles, where Feferman graduated from high school at age 16.
He received his B.S. from the
California Institute of Technology in 1948, and in 1957 his Ph.D. in mathematics from the
University of California, Berkeley , under
Alfred Tarski ,
[3] after having been drafted and having served in the U.S. Army from 1953 to 1955. In 1956 he was appointed to the Departments of Mathematics and Philosophy at
Stanford University , where he later became the
Patrick Suppes Professor of Humanities and Sciences. While the majority of his career was spent at Stanford, he also spent time as a post-doctoral fellow at the
Institute for Advanced Study in
Princeton , a visiting professor at
MIT , and a visiting fellow at the
University of Oxford (
Wolfson College and
All Souls College ).
[4]
Feferman died on 26 July 2016 at his home in
Stanford , following an illness that lasted three months and a
stroke .
[2]
[5]
[6] At his death, he had been a member of the
Mathematical Association of America for 37 years.
[7]
Contributions
Feferman was editor-in-chief of the five-volume Collected Works of
Kurt Gödel , published by
Oxford University Press between 2001 and 2013.
In 2004, together with his wife
Anita Burdman Feferman , he published a biography of
Alfred Tarski : Alfred Tarski: Life and Logic .
[8]
He worked on
predicative mathematics , in particular introducing the
Feferman–Schütte ordinal as a measure of the strength of certain predicative systems.
Recognition
Feferman was awarded
Guggenheim Fellowships in 1972 and 1986
[9] and the
Rolf Schock Prize in logic and philosophy in 2003.
[10] He was invited to give the
Gödel Lecture in 1997
[11] and the
Tarski Lectures in 2006.
[12] In 2012, he became a fellow of the
American Mathematical Society .
[13]
Publications
Papers
Feferman, Solomon; Vaught, Robert L. (1959), "The first order properties of products of algebraic systems", Fund. Math. 47, 57–103.
Feferman, Solomon (1975), "A language and axioms for explicit mathematics", Algebra and logic (Fourteenth Summer Res. Inst., Austral. Math. Soc., Monash Univ., Clayton, 1974), pp. 87–139, Lecture Notes in Math., vol. 450, Berlin, Springer.
Feferman, Solomon (1979), "Constructive theories of functions and classes", Logic Colloquium '78 (Mons, 1978) , pp. 159–224, Stud. Logic Foundations Math., 97, Amsterdam, New York, North-Holland.
Buchholz, Wilfried; Feferman, Solomon; Pohlers, Wolfram; Sieg, Wilfried (1981), "Iterated inductive definitions and subsystems of analysis: recent proof-theoretical studies", Lecture Notes in Mathematics , 897, Berlin, New York, Springer-Verlag.
Feferman, Solomon;
Hellman, Geoffrey (1995), "Predicative foundations of arithmetic", J. Philos. Logic 24 (1), 1–17.
Avigad, Jeremy ; Feferman, Solomon (1998), "Gödel's functional (Dialectica ) interpretation", Handbook of proof theory , 337–405, Stud. Logic Found. Math., 137, Amsterdam, North-Holland.
Books
See also
References
^
"Enriched Stratified systems for the Foundations of Category Theory" by Solomon Feferman (2011)
^
a
b
"Solomon Feferman (1928-2016)" .
^
Solomon Feferman at the
Mathematics Genealogy Project
^
"Solomon Feferman's homepage" . Archived from
the original on October 24, 2017.
^ Lanier Anderson, R. (August 4, 2016).
"A tribute to Solomon Feferman (1928–2016)" . philosophy.stanford.edu .
Archived from the original on September 11, 2016. Retrieved July 24, 2021 .
^
"Stanford mathematical logician Solomon Feferman dies at 87" . Stanford News . October 7, 2016. Retrieved July 24, 2021 .
^
"In Memoriam | Mathematical Association of America" . www.maa.org . Retrieved July 24, 2021 .
^
a
b Reviews of Alfred Tarski :
Dauben, Joseph W. (2005),
Mathematical Reviews ,
MR
2095748 {{
citation }}
: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (
link )
Anellis, Irving H. (2005),
"Review" , The Review of Modern Logic , 10 (1–2): 117–130
Davis, Philip J. (March 2005),
"A life of logic and the illogic of life" , SIAM News
Davis, Martin (March–April 2005), "The Man Who Defined Truth",
American Scientist , 93 (2): 175–177,
JSTOR
27858554
Shell-Gellasch, Amy (May 2005),
"Review" , MAA Reviews
Misiuna, Krystyna (May 2005), History and Philosophy of Logic , 26 (2): 166–168,
doi :
10.1080/01445340412331313602 ,
S2CID
216590845 {{
citation }}
: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (
link )
Mendelson, Elliott (June 2005),
Philosophia Mathematica , 13 (2): 231–232,
doi :
10.1093/philmat/nki020 {{
citation }}
: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (
link )
Kilmister, C. W. (July 2005),
The Mathematical Gazette , 89 (515): 330–331,
doi :
10.1017/S0025557200177988 ,
JSTOR
3621256 ,
S2CID
171454519 {{
citation }}
: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (
link )
Schmit, Roger (Fall 2005), Archives de Philosophie , 68 (3): 546–547,
JSTOR
43038344 {{
citation }}
: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (
link )
Maddux, Roger D. (December 2005),
The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic , 11 (4): 535–540,
doi :
10.1017/S1079898600003000 ,
JSTOR
3396716 ,
S2CID
124002889 {{
citation }}
: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (
link )
Kybernetes , 35 (1/2), January 2006,
doi :
10.1108/k.2006.06735aae.002 {{
citation }}
: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (
link )
Lescanne, Pierre (March 2006),
ACM SIGACT News , 37 (1): 27,
doi :
10.1145/1122480.1122489 ,
S2CID
9529607 {{
citation }}
: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (
link )
Carnielli, Walter (March 2006), Logic and Logical Philosophy , 15 (1),
doi :
10.12775/llp.2006.005 {{
citation }}
: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (
link )
Wood, Carol (April 2006), The American Mathematical Monthly , 113 (4): 377–379,
doi :
10.2307/27641942 ,
JSTOR
27641942 {{
citation }}
: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (
link )
Oberdan, Thomas (June 2006), Isis , 97 (2): 362–363,
doi :
10.1086/507375 ,
JSTOR
10.1086/507375 {{
citation }}
: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (
link )
Grattan-Guinness, Ivor (September 2006), The British Journal for the History of Science , 39 (3): 469–470,
doi :
10.1017/S0007087406438681 ,
JSTOR
4028507 {{
citation }}
: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (
link )
Apt, Krzysztof R. (March 2007), "Alfred Tarski: life and logic",
The Mathematical Intelligencer , 29 (2): 78–80,
doi :
10.1007/bf02986214 ,
S2CID
189883846
Sinaceur, Hourya Benis (September 2007),
"Review" (PDF) ,
Notices of the American Mathematical Society , 54 (8): 986–989
Bassols, Alejandro Tomasini (April 2006), Crítica: Revista Hispanoamericana de Filosofía , 38 (112): 105–111,
JSTOR
40104969 {{
citation }}
: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (
link )
Brown, Scott H. (March 2009), The Mathematics Teacher , 102 (7): 558,
JSTOR
20876430 {{
citation }}
: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (
link )
Bremer, Manuel (December 2009),
"Review" , Philosophy in Review , 29 (6): 404
Nerode, Anil (March 2010), The American Mathematical Monthly , 117 (3): 286–288,
doi :
10.4169/000298910x480144 ,
JSTOR
10.4169/000298910x480144 ,
S2CID
218549336 {{
citation }}
: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (
link )
Czernecka-Rej, Bożena (2011), Roczniki Filozoficzne , 59 (1): 79–84,
JSTOR
43408916 {{
citation }}
: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (
link )
^
"John Simon Guggenheim Foundation | Solomon Feferman" .
^
"Feferman awarded Rolf Schock Prize in logic and philosophy" .
^
"Gödel Lecturers – Association for Symbolic Logic" . Archived from
the original on November 8, 2021. Retrieved November 8, 2021 .
^
"The Tarski Lectures | Department of Mathematics at University of California Berkeley" . math.berkeley.edu . Retrieved November 8, 2021 .
^
List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society , retrieved December 2, 2012.
^ Reviews of In the Light of Logic :
Avigad, Jeremy (December 1999),
"[Untitled]" ,
The Journal of Philosophy , 96 (12): 638–642,
doi :
10.2307/2564698 ,
JSTOR
2564698
Antonelli, G. Aldo (June 2001), The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic , 7 (2): 270–277,
doi :
10.2307/2687778 ,
JSTOR
2687778 ,
S2CID
122751203 {{
citation }}
: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (
link )
Mendelson, E. (2001), Mathematical Reviews ,
MR
1661162 {{
citation }}
: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (
link )
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