Grigori Mints (June 7, 1939 – May 29, 2014) was a Russian

philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

and

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

who worked in

mathematical logic Mathematical logic is the study of logic, formal logic within mathematics. Major subareas include model theory, proof theory, set theory, and recursion theory. Research in mathematical logic commonly addresses the mathematical properties of for ...

. He was born in

Leningrad Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

, in the Soviet Union (now

St. Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

, Russia), and received his Ph.D. in 1965 from the

Leningrad State University Saint Petersburg State University (SPBU; russian: Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет) is a public research university in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Founded in 1724 by a decree of Peter the G ...

under

Nikolai Aleksandrovich Shanin Nikolai Aleksandrovich Shanin (russian: Николай Александрович Шанин) (25 May 1919 Pskov – 17 September 2011) was a Russian mathematician who worked on topology and constructive mathematics. He introduced the delta-system ...

with a thesis entitled "On Predicate and Operator Variants for Building Theories of Constructive Mathematics". In 1990 he received his D.Sc. from

with a thesis entitled "Proof Transformations and Synthesis of Programs". He was a

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

. Since 1991, Grigori "Grisha" Mints was a professor of philosophy and, by courtesy, of mathematics and of computer science at Stanford University. Before joining Stanford, Mints held research positions at the

Steklov Mathematical Institute Steklov Institute of Mathematics or Steklov Mathematical Institute (russian: Математический институт имени В.А.Стеклова) is a premier research institute based in Moscow, specialized in mathematics, and a part o ...

Leningrad University Saint Petersburg State University (SPBU; russian: Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет) is a public research university in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Founded in 1724 by a decree of Peter the G ...

, and the

Estonian Academy of Sciences Founded in 1938, the Estonian Academy of Sciences ( et, Eesti Teaduste Akadeemia) is Estonia's national academy of science in Tallinn. As with other national academies, it is an independent group of well-known scientists whose stated aim is to ...

. Considered one of the most distinguished logicians in the world, Mints was passionate about the applications of logic to philosophy. His expertise was in

proof theory Proof theory is a major branchAccording to Wang (1981), pp. 3–4, proof theory is one of four domains mathematical logic, together with model theory, axiomatic set theory, and recursion theory. Jon Barwise, Barwise (1978) consists of four correspo ...

– the analysis of the structure of mathematical reasoning. Mints was elected to the

in 2008 and to the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...

in 2010. Mints was a very active member of the steering committee of the WoLLIC series of workshops on logic and language, after having been a member of the community in several capacities such as invited speaker, PC member, PC chair, Organising Committee chair, guest editor of proceedings and special issue, and steering committee member.

Selected publications

*Mints, G. (2013) Epsilon substitution for first- and second-order predicate logic. "Ann. Pure Appl. Logic" 164(6): 733-739. *Mints, G., Olkhovikov, G.V., Urquhart, A. (2013) Failure of interpolation in constant domain intuitionistic logic. "J. Symb. Log." 78(3): 937-950. *Mints, G. (2013) ADC Method of Proof Search for Intuitionistic Propositional Natural Deduction. To appear in a "Festsschrift for A. Avron". *Mints, G. (2012) Effective Cut-elimination for a Fragment of Modal mu-calculus. "Studia Logica" 100(1-2): 279-287. *Mints, G. (2010) Cut-free formulations for a quantified logic of here and there. "Ann. Pure Appl. Logic" 162(3): 237-242. *Mints, G. (2008) Cut elimination for a simple formulation of epsilon calculus. "Ann. Pure Appl. Logic" 152(1-3): 148-160. *Mints, G. (2006) Notes on constructive negation. in R. Kahle and P. Schroeder-Heister (eds.), "Proof-Theoretic Semantics", special issue of "Synthese", 2006, 148, issue 3, pp. 701–717. *Mints, G. (2006) Cut Elimination for a Simple Formulation of PAepsilon. "Electr. Notes Theor. Comput. Sci." 143: 159-169. *Mints, G. (2006) S4 is Topologically Complete for (0, 1): a Short Proof. "Logic Journal of the IGPL" 14(1): 63-71. *Mints, G. (2006) Cut Elimination for S4C: A Case Study. "Studia Logica" 82(1): 121-132. *Mints, G. & Zhang, T. (2005) Propositional logic of continuous transformations in Cantor space. "Arch. Math. Log." 44(6): 783-799. *Kremer, Ph. & Mints, G. (2005) Dynamic topological logic. "Ann. Pure Appl. Logic" 131(1-3): 133-158. *Mints, G. & Zhang, T. (2005) A proof of topological completeness for S4 in (0, 1). "Ann. Pure Appl. Logic" 133(1-3): 231-245. *Tatsuta, M. & Mints, G. (2005) A simple proof of second-order strong normalization with permutative conversions. "Ann. Pure Appl. Logic" 136(1-2): 134-155 *Mints, G. & Muskens, R. (eds.) (2003) "Games, Logic, and Constructive Sets". Published by Center for the Study of Language and Information - Lecture Notes (Book 161), 2003. *Mints, G. (2001) "A Short Introduction to Intuitionistic Logic" (University Series in Mathematics). Published by Kluwer Academic Publisher, 2001. *Mints, G. (1992) "A Short Introduction to Modal Logic". Published by Center for the Study of Language and Information - Lecture Notes (Book 30), 1992. * ''Selected Papers in Proof Theory'' (North-Holland), August 1992, , Studies in Proof Theory series) *Mints, G. & Martin-Löf, P. (eds.) (1990) "COLOG-88: International Conference on Computer Logic", Tallinn, USSR, December 12–16, 1988, Proceedings - Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Vol. 417), 1990.

References

External links

Grigori Mints official website
at

Tributes to Grigori Mints
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mints, Grigori 1939 births 2014 deaths 21st-century Russian mathematicians Russian logicians 20th-century Russian philosophers 21st-century Russian philosophers Mathematical logicians Historians of mathematics Stanford University Department of Philosophy faculty Philosophers of mathematics