Frederic Brenton Fitch (September 9, 1908,

Greenwich, Connecticut Greenwich (, ) is a New England town, town in southwestern Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. At the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census, the town had a total population of 63,518. The largest town on Connecticut's Gold Coast (Conne ...

– September 18, 1987,

New Haven, Connecticut New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134,02 ...

) was an American

logician Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premises ...

, a Sterling Professor at

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

Education and career

At Yale, Fitch earned his B.A in 1931 and his Ph.D. from Yale in 1934 under the supervision of

F. S. C. Northrop Filmer Stuart Cuckow Northrop (November 27, 1893 in Janesville, Wisconsin – July 22, 1992 in Exeter, New Hampshire) was an American legal philosopher and influential comparative philosopher. After receiving a B.A. from Beloit College in 19 ...

. From 1934 to 1937 Fitch was a postdoc at the

University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United S ...

. In 1937 he returned to Yale, where he taught until his retirement in 1977. His doctoral students include

Alan Ross Anderson Alan Ross Anderson (1925–1973) was an American logician and professor of philosophy at Yale University and the University of Pittsburgh. A frequent collaborator with Nuel Belnap, Anderson was instrumental in the development of relevance l ...

Ruth Barcan Marcus Ruth Barcan Marcus (; born Ruth Charlotte Barcan; 2 August 1921 – 19 February 2012) was an American academic philosopher and logician best known for her work in modal and philosophical logic. She developed the first formal systems of quant ...

, and

William W. Tait William Walker Tait (born 1929) is an emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago, where he served as a faculty member from 1972 to 1996, and as department chair from 1981 to 1987. Education and career Tait received his B.A. f ...

Work

Fitch was the

inventor An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It may also be an entirely new concept. If an ...

of the

Fitch-style calculus Fitch notation, also known as Fitch diagrams (named after Frederic Fitch), is a notational system for constructing formal proofs used in sentential logics and predicate logics. Fitch-style proofs arrange the sequence of sentences that make up the ...

for arranging formal logical proofs as diagrams. In his 1963 published paper "A Logical Analysis of Some Value Concepts" he proves "Theorem 5" (originally by

Alonzo Church Alonzo Church (June 14, 1903 – August 11, 1995) was an American mathematician, computer scientist, logician, philosopher, professor and editor who made major contributions to mathematical logic and the foundations of theoretical computer scien ...

), which later became famous in context of the knowability paradox.Fitch's Paradox of Knowability
in the

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy The ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (''SEP'') combines an online encyclopedia of philosophy with peer-reviewed publication of original papers in philosophy, freely accessible to Internet users. It is maintained by Stanford University. Eac ...

. Fitch worked primarily in combinatory logic, authoring an undergraduate-level textbook on the subject (1974), but he also made significant contributions to intuitionism and modal logic. He was interested in the problem of the consistency, completeness, categoricity, and constructivity of logical theories, especially nonclassical logics, and contributed to the foundations of mathematics and to inductive probability. He dealt with the theory of references in "The Problem of the Morning Star and the Evening Star" (1949). He also contributed to the philosophy of how logic relates to language.

Works

* 1952: '' Symbolic Logic, An Introduction'', The Ronald Press Company * 1963
"A Logical Analysis of Some Value Concepts"
(This paper has over 400 citations.) * 1974: '' Elements of Combinatory Logic'',

Yale University Press Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day, and became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and operationally autonomous. , Yale Universi ...

* 1975: (with

, Ruth Barcan Marcus, and

Richard Milton Martin Richard Milton Martin (1916, Cleveland, Ohio – 22 November 1985, Milton, Massachusetts) was an American logician and analytic philosopher. In his Ph.D. thesis written under Frederic Fitch, Martin discovered virtual sets a bit before Quine ...

References

External links

Bibliography of papers by Frederic Fitch on PhilPapers

Frederic Brenton Fitch Papers.
Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library. {{DEFAULTSORT:Fitch, Frederic Brenton 1908 births 1987 deaths American logicians Yale Sterling Professors 20th-century American mathematicians

Education and career

Work

Works

See also

References

External links