Richard Zach is a Canadian logician, philosopher of mathematics, and historian of logic and analytic philosophy. He is currently Professor of Philosophy at the

University of Calgary The University of Calgary (U of C or UCalgary) is a public research university located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The University of Calgary started in 1944 as the Calgary branch of the University of Alberta, founded in 1908, prior to being ins ...

Research

Zach's research interests include the development of formal logic and historical figures (

Hilbert David Hilbert (; ; 23 January 1862 – 14 February 1943) was a German mathematician, one of the most influential mathematicians of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Hilbert discovered and developed a broad range of fundamental ideas in many a ...

, Gödel, and

Carnap Rudolf Carnap (; ; 18 May 1891 – 14 September 1970) was a German-language philosopher who was active in Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. He was a major member of the Vienna Circle and an advocate of logical positivism. ...

) associated with this development. In the

philosophy of mathematics The philosophy of mathematics is the branch of philosophy that studies the assumptions, foundations, and implications of mathematics. It aims to understand the nature and methods of mathematics, and find out the place of mathematics in people's ...

Zach has worked on

's program and the philosophical relevance of proof theory. In mathematical logic, he has made contributions to

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 ...

(

epsilon calculus David Hilbert, Hilbert's epsilon calculus is an extension of a formal language by the epsilon operator, where the epsilon operator substitutes for Quantification (logic), quantifiers in that language as a method leading to a consistency proof, proof ...

proof complexity In logic and theoretical computer science, and specifically proof theory and computational complexity theory, proof complexity is the field aiming to understand and analyse the computational resources that are required to prove or refute statements. ...

) and to modal and

many-valued logic Many-valued logic (also multi- or multiple-valued logic) refers to a propositional calculus in which there are more than two truth values. Traditionally, in Aristotle's logical calculus, there were only two possible values (i.e., "true" and "false" ...

, especially

Gödel logic In mathematical logic, a first-order Gödel logic is a member of a family of finite- or infinite-valued logics in which the sets of truth values ''V'' are closed subsets of the interval ,1containing both 0 and 1. Different such sets ''V'' in gene ...

Career

Zach received his undergraduate education at the

Vienna University of Technology TU Wien (TUW; german: Technische Universität Wien; still known in English as the Vienna University of Technology from 1975–2014) is one of the major universities in Vienna, Austria. The university finds high international and domestic recogn ...

and his Ph.D. at the Group in Logic and the Methodology of Science at the

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 ...

. His dissertation, ''Hilbert's Program: Historical, Philosophical, and Metamathematical Perspectives'', was jointly supervised by Paolo Mancosu and

Jack Silver Jack Howard Silver (23 April 1942 – 22 December 2016) was a set theorist and logician at the University of California, Berkeley. Born in Montana, he earned his Ph.D. in Mathematics at Berkeley in 1966 under Robert Vaught before taking a posi ...

. He has taught at the

since 2001, and holds the rank of Professor. He has held visiting appointments at the

University of California, Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a public land-grant research university in Irvine, California. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, UCI offers 87 undergraduate degrees and 129 graduate and pr ...

and

McGill University McGill University (french: link=no, Université McGill) is an English-language public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter granted by King George IV,Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill Universit ...

. Zach is a founding editor of the '' Review of Symbolic Logic'' and the '' Journal for the Study of the History of Analytic Philosophy'', and is also associate editor of ''

Studia Logica ''Studia Logica'' (full name: Studia Logica, An International Journal for Symbolic Logic), is a scienific journal publishing papers employing formal tools from Mathematics and Logic. The scope of papers published in Studia Logica covers all scient ...

'', and a subject editor for 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 ...

'' (History of Modern Logic). He serves on the editorial boards of the Bernays edition and the

edition. He was elected to the Council of the

Association for Symbolic Logic The Association for Symbolic Logic (ASL) is an international organization of specialists in mathematical logic and philosophical logic. The ASL was founded in 1936, and its first president was Alonzo Church. The current president of the ASL is ...

in 2008 and he has served on the ASL Committee on Logic Education and the executive committee of the

Kurt Gödel Society The Kurt Gödel Society was founded in Vienna, Austria in 1987. It is an international organization aimed at promoting research primarily on logic, philosophy and the history of mathematics, with special attention to connections with Kurt Gödel, ...

References

External links

Official Website

LogBlog: A Logic Blog

Departmental information page

Society for the Study of the History of Analytical Philosophy

Open Logic Project
{{DEFAULTSORT:Zach, Richard Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Canadian philosophers Academic staff of the University of Calgary Mathematical logicians Philosophers of mathematics Austrian logicians