Lawrence T. Wos (1930–2020) was an American

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 ...

, a researcher in the Mathematics and Computer Science Division of

Argonne National Laboratory Argonne National Laboratory is a science and engineering research United States Department of Energy National Labs, national laboratory operated by University of Chicago, UChicago Argonne LLC for the United States Department of Energy. The facil ...

Biography

Wos studied at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

, receiving a bachelor's degree in 1950 and a master's in mathematics in 1954, and went on for doctoral studies at the

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univ ...

where he received PhD in 1957 supervised by

Reinhold Baer Reinhold Baer (22 July 1902 – 22 October 1979) was a German mathematician, known for his work in algebra. He introduced injective modules in 1940. He is the eponym of Baer rings and Baer groups. Biography Baer studied mechanical engineering f ...

. He joined the Argonne in 1957, and began using computers to prove mathematical theorems in 1963. Wos was congenitally blind. He was an avid bowler, the best male blind bowler in the US.

Awards and honors

In 1982, Wos and his colleague Steve Winker were the first to win the Automated Theorem Proving Prize, given by the

American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...

.''Chicago Tribune'', November 18, 1982. In 1992, Wos was the first to win the

Herbrand Award The Herbrand Award for Distinguished Contributions to Automated Reasoning is an award given by the Conference on Automated Deduction (CADE), Inc., (although it predates the formal incorporation of CADE) to honour persons or groups for important cont ...

for his contributions to the field of

automated deduction Automated theorem proving (also known as ATP or automated deduction) is a subfield of automated reasoning and mathematical logic dealing with proving mathematical theorems by computer programs. Automated reasoning over mathematical proof was a maj ...

. A

festschrift In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the h ...

in his honor, ''Automated reasoning and its applications: essays in honor of Larry Wos'' (Robert Veroff, ed.) was published by the

MIT Press The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States). It was established in 1962. History The MIT Press traces its origins back to 1926 when MIT publish ...

in 1997 ().

Books

Wos and Gail W. Pieper are the coauthors of the books ''A Fascinating Country in the World of Computing: Your Guide to Automated Reasoning'' (World Scientific, 1999, ) and ''Automated Reasoning and the Discovery of Missing and Elegant Proofs'' (Rinton Press, 2003, ). Wos's collected works were published by World Scientific in 2000, in two volumes ().

References

External links

*
Publication list at DBLP

Blind academics Academics from Chicago 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians University of Chicago alumni University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alumni 1930 births 2020 deaths {{US-mathematician-stub