Solomon Feferman (December 13, 1928 – July 26, 2016)
was an American
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 ...
.
Life
Solomon Feferman was born in
The Bronx
The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...
in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
to working-class parents who had immigrated to the United States after
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
and had met and married in New York. Neither parent had any advanced education. The family moved to Los Angeles, where Feferman graduated from high school at age 16.
He received his B.S. from the
California Institute of Technology
The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...
in 1948, and in 1957 his Ph.D. in mathematics from 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 ...
, under
Alfred Tarski
Alfred Tarski (, born Alfred Teitelbaum;School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews ''School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews''. January 14, 1901 – October 26, 1983) was a Polish-American logician a ...
, after having been drafted and having served in the U.S. Army from 1953 to 1955. In 1956 he was appointed to the Departments of Mathematics and Philosophy at
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 ...
, where he later became the
Patrick Suppes
Patrick Colonel Suppes (; March 17, 1922 – November 17, 2014) was an American philosopher who made significant contributions to philosophy of science, the theory of measurement, the foundations of quantum mechanics, decision theory, psychology ...
Professor of Humanities and Sciences.
Feferman died on 26 July 2016 at his home in
Stanford
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 considere ...
, following an illness that lasted three months and a
stroke
A stroke is a medical condition in which poor blood flow to the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and hemorrhagic, due to bleeding. Both cause parts of the brain to stop functionin ...
.
At his death, he had been a member of the
MAA for 37 years.
Contributions
Feferman was editor-in-chief of the five-volume ''Collected Works'' of
Kurt Gödel, published by
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...
between 2001 and 2013.
In 2004, together with his wife
Anita Burdman Feferman Anita Burdman Feferman (July 27, 1927 – April 9, 2015) was an American historian of mathematics and biographer, known for her biographies of Jean van Heijenoort and (with her husband, logician Solomon Feferman) of Alfred Tarski.
Life
Feferman ...
, he published a biography of
Alfred Tarski
Alfred Tarski (, born Alfred Teitelbaum;School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews ''School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews''. January 14, 1901 – October 26, 1983) was a Polish-American logician a ...
: ''Alfred Tarski: Life and Logic''.
[
He worked on ]predicative mathematics
In mathematics, logic and philosophy of mathematics, something that is impredicative is a self-referencing definition. Roughly speaking, a definition is impredicative if it invokes (mentions or quantifies over) the set being defined, or (more com ...
, in particular introducing the Feferman–Schütte ordinal
In mathematics, the Feferman–Schütte ordinal Γ0 is a large countable ordinal.
It is the proof-theoretic ordinal of several mathematical theories, such as arithmetical transfinite recursion.
It is named after Solomon Feferman and Kurt Schütte, ...
as a measure of the strength of certain predicative systems.
Recognition
Feferman was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...
in 1972 and 1986 and the Rolf Schock Prize
The Rolf Schock Prizes were established and endowed by bequest of philosopher and artist Rolf Schock (1933–1986). The prizes were first awarded in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1993 and, since 2005, are awarded every three years. Each recipient current ...
in logic and philosophy in 2003. He was invited to give 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.
...
in 1997 and the Tarski Lectures
The Alfred Tarski Lectures are an annual distinction in mathematical logic and series of lectures held at the University of California, Berkeley. Established in tribute to Alfred Tarski on the fifth anniversary of his death, the award has been give ...
in 2006. In 2012 he became a fellow of 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, ...
.List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society
retrieved December 2, 2012.
Publications
Papers
*Feferman, Solomon; Vaught, Robert L. (1959), "The first order properties of products of algebraic systems", ''Fund. Math.'' 47, 57–103.
*Feferman, Solomon (1975), "A language and axioms for explicit mathematics", ''Algebra and logic'' (Fourteenth Summer Res. Inst., Austral. Math. Soc., Monash Univ., Clayton, 1974), pp. 87–139, Lecture Notes in Math., vol. 450, Berlin, Springer.
*Feferman, Solomon (1979), "Constructive theories of functions and classes", ''Logic Colloquium '78 (Mons, 1978)'', pp. 159–224, Stud. Logic Foundations Math., 97, Amsterdam, New York, North-Holland.
*Buchholz, Wilfried; Feferman, Solomon; Pohlers, Wolfram; Sieg, Wilfried (1981), "Iterated inductive definitions and subsystems of analysis: recent proof-theoretical studies", ''Lecture Notes in Mathematics'', 897, Berlin, New York, Springer-Verlag.
*Feferman, Solomon;
Hellman, Geoffrey (1995), "Predicative foundations of arithmetic", ''J. Philos. Logic'' 24 (1), 1–17.
*
Avigad, Jeremy; Feferman, Solomon (1998), "Gödel's functional (''Dialectica'') interpretation", ''Handbook of proof theory'', 337–405, Stud. Logic Found. Math., 137, Amsterdam, North-Holland.
Books
*Feferman, Solomon. (1998). ''In the Light of Logic''. Oxford University Press. , Logic and Computation in Philosophy series.
[
*][
]
See also
*Criticism of non-standard analysis Nonstandard analysis and its offshoot, nonstandard calculus, have been criticized by several authors, notably Errett Bishop, Paul Halmos, and Alain Connes. These criticisms are analyzed below.
Introduction
The evaluation of nonstandard analysis i ...
References
External links
Solomon Feferman official website
(via Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...
) at 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 ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Feferman, Solomon
1928 births
21st-century American mathematicians
American logicians
Jewish American scientists
Jewish philosophers
Mathematical logicians
American historians of mathematics
University of California, Berkeley alumni
Rolf Schock Prize laureates
Stanford University Department of Philosophy faculty
Stanford University Department of Mathematics faculty
Philosophers of mathematics
Fellows of the American Mathematical Society
Tarski lecturers
2016 deaths
21st-century American Jews
Gödel Lecturers
20th-century American mathematicians