John Robert Steel (born October 30, 1948) is an American set theorist at

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

(formerly at

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

). He has made many contributions to the theory of

inner model In set theory, a branch of mathematical logic, an inner model for a theory ''T'' is a substructure of a model ''M'' of a set theory that is both a model for ''T'' and contains all the ordinals of ''M''. Definition Let L = \langle \in \rangle be ...

s and

determinacy Determinacy is a subfield of set theory, a branch of mathematics, that examines the conditions under which one or the other player of a game has a winning strategy, and the consequences of the existence of such strategies. Alternatively and sim ...

. With

Donald A. Martin Donald Anthony Martin (born December 24, 1940), also known as Tony Martin, is an American set theorist and philosopher of mathematics at UCLA, where he is an emeritus professor of mathematics and philosophy. Education and career Martin rece ...

, he proved

projective determinacy In mathematical logic, projective determinacy is the special case of the axiom of determinacy applying only to projective sets. The axiom of projective determinacy, abbreviated PD, states that for any two-player infinite game of perfect informatio ...

, assuming the existence of sufficient

large cardinal In the mathematical field of set theory, a large cardinal property is a certain kind of property of transfinite cardinal numbers. Cardinals with such properties are, as the name suggests, generally very "large" (for example, bigger than the least � ...

s. He earned his

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...

in Logic & the Methodology of Science at Berkeley in 1977 under the joint supervision of John West Addison Jr. and Stephen G. Simpson.

Awards

In 1988, the Association for Symbolic Logic awarded him,

and

W. Hugh Woodin William Hugh Woodin (born April 23, 1955) is an American mathematician and set theorist at Harvard University. He has made many notable contributions to the theory of inner models and determinacy. A type of large cardinals, the Woodin cardinals, ...

the Karp Prize for their work on the consistency of determinacy relative to large cardinals. In 2015, the European Set Theory Society awarded him and Ronald Jensen the

Hausdorff Medal The Hausdorff medal is a mathematical prize awarded every two years by the European Set Theory Society. The award recognises the work considered to have had the most impact within set theory among all articles published in the previous five years. ...

for their paper "K without the measurable". In 2012, Steel held the

Gödel Lecture The Gödel Lecture is an honor in mathematical logic given by the Association for Symbolic Logic, associated with an annual lecture at the association's general meeting. The award is named after Kurt Gödel and has been given annually since 1990. ...

titled ''The hereditarily ordinal definable sets in models of determinacy.''

References

External links

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at Berkeley Living people 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians American logicians Set theorists University of California, Berkeley alumni University of California, Berkeley faculty University of California, Los Angeles faculty 1948 births Hausdorff Medal winners {{US-mathematician-stub