MANUSCRIPT COLLECTION
Title:
Dates:
1927-1991
Abstract:
A Polish-born mathematician who worked in symbolic logic, set theory and computation theory, Emil Leon Post received his doctorate from Columbia in 1920 for a dissertation proving the consistency of the propositional calculus described in Whitehead and Russell's Principia mathematica. He joined the faculty at City College of the City University of New York in 1932, where he remained until his death in 1954. Although illness continually interrupted Post's career, he made important contributions to the concepts of completeness and consistency and to recursive functions, foundational to modern computing theory. In 1936, he introduced the concept of a "Post machine," a sort of precursor to the von Neumann's notion of a program. The Post Papers consist of 8 linear feet of professional correspondence, research notes, and papers, to which have been added a small number of items of biographical interest.
Call #:
Mss.Ms.Coll.45
Extent:
4 Linear feet
Subjects:
View Subjects
Algorithms | American Mathematical Society | Church, Alonzo, 1903- | City University of New York. City College | Davis, Martin, 1928- | Drawings. | Eugenics -- United States | Godel, Kurt | Journals (notebooks) | Logic, Symbolic and mathematical | Post, Emil Leon, 1897-1954 | Quine, W. V. (Willard Van Orman) | Set theory