Platon Sergeevich Poretsky (russian: Платон Серге́евич Порецкий; October 3, 1846 in

Elisavetgrad Kropyvnytskyi ( uk, Кропивницький, Kropyvnytskyi ) is a city in central Ukraine on the Inhul river with a population of . It is an administrative center of the Kirovohrad Oblast. Over its history, Kropyvnytskyi has changed its name ...

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...

– August 9, 1907 in

Gorodnyansky Uyezd Gorodnyansky Uyezd (''Городнянский уезд'') was one of the subdivisions of the Chernigov Governorate of the Russian Empire. It was situated in the western part of the governorate. Its administrative centre was Gorodnya (Horodnia). ...

Chernigov Governorate The Chernigov Governorate (russian: Черниговская губерния; translit.: ''Chernigovskaya guberniya''; ), also known as the Government of Chernigov, was a guberniya in the historical Left-bank Ukraine region of the Russian ...

, Russian Empire) was a noted

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

Imperial

astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, natural satellite, moons, comets and galaxy, g ...

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 ...

, and

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 ...

. Graduated from

Kharkov University The Kharkiv University or Karazin University ( uk, Каразінський університет), or officially V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University ( uk, Харківський національний університет імені ...

, he worked in

Astrakhan Astrakhan ( rus, Астрахань, p=ˈastrəxənʲ) is the largest city and administrative centre of Astrakhan Oblast in Southern Russia. The city lies on two banks of the Volga, in the upper part of the Volga Delta, on eleven islands of the ...

and

Pulkovo Pulkovo may refer to: *Pulkovo Heights marking the southern limit of Saint Petersburg, Russia *Pulkovo Airport serving Saint Petersburg, Russia *Pulkovo Aviation Enterprise, a former (until 2006) state airline based in Saint Petersburg, Russia *Pul ...

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 ...

. Later, as an astronomer at

Kazan University Kazan (Volga region) Federal University (russian: Казанский (Приволжский) федеральный университет, tt-Cyrl, Казан (Идел буе) федераль университеты) is a public research uni ...

, following the advice of his older colleague Professor of Mathematics A.V. Vasiliev at

(father of

Nicolai A. Vasiliev Nicolai Alexandrovich Vasiliev (russian: Николай Александрович Васильев), also Vasil'ev, Vassilieff, Wassilieff (December 31, 1940), was a Russian logician, philosopher, psychologist, poet. He was a forerunner of Paracons ...

) to learn the works of

George Boole George Boole (; 2 November 1815 – 8 December 1864) was a largely self-taught English mathematician, philosopher, and logician, most of whose short career was spent as the first professor of mathematics at Queen's College, Cork in Ire ...

, Poretsky developed "logical calculus" and through specific "logical equations" applied it to the

theory of probability Probability theory is the branch of mathematics concerned with probability. Although there are several different probability interpretations, probability theory treats the concept in a rigorous mathematical manner by expressing it through a set o ...

. Thus, he extended and augmented the works of logicians and mathematicians George Boole,

William Stanley Jevons William Stanley Jevons (; 1 September 183513 August 1882) was an English economist and logician. Irving Fisher described Jevons's book ''A General Mathematical Theory of Political Economy'' (1862) as the start of the mathematical method in ec ...

and Ernst Schröder. He discovered Poretsky's law of forms and gave the first general treatment of antecedent and consequent Boolean reasoning,Platon Poretsky, "Sept lois fondamentales de la théorie des égalités logiques", ''Bulletin de la Société Physico-Mathématique de Kasan'', 2:8:33–103, 129–181, 183–216, 1898, as cited in Frank Markham Brown, ''Boolean Reasoning: The Logic of Boolean Equations'', 2nd edition, 2003, p. 77 laying the groundwork for Archie Blake's work on the

Blake canonical form In Boolean logic, a formula for a Boolean function ''f'' is in Blake canonical form (BCF), also called the complete sum of prime implicants, the complete sum, or the disjunctive prime form, when it is a disjunction of all the prime implicants of ...

Notes

References

* Styazhkin, N.I. ''History of Mathematical Logic from Leibniz to Peano''. Cambridge, Mass./ London, MIT Press, 1969. * Bazhanov, V.A. New Archival Materials, Concerning P.S. Poretsky. In: Modern Logic, 1992, vol. 3. N 1. pp. 80–81. * Bazhanov, V.A.
''Life and Academic Work of Mathematical Logic Research Pioneer in Russia P.S. Poretsky''
In: Voprosy Istorii Estestvoznania i Tekhniki, 2005, N 4. pp. 64–73 (in Russian). * Bazhanov, V.A. ''History of Logic in Russia and the USSR''. Moscow, Kanon+, 2007 (in Russian).

External links

Platon Poretsky
at the

MacTutor History of Mathematics archive The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive is a website maintained by John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson and hosted by the University of St Andrews in Scotland. It contains detailed biographies on many historical and contemporary mathemati ...

* S.L. Katrechko
Platon Sergeevich Poretskij
Astronomers from the Russian Empire 19th-century mathematicians from the Russian Empire Academic staff of Kazan Federal University Scientists from Kropyvnytskyi National University of Kharkiv alumni Russian people of Ukrainian descent 1846 births 1907 deaths Scientists from the Russian Empire {{Russia-mathematician-stub