Stephen George Simpson is an American mathematician whose research concerns the

foundations of mathematics Foundations of mathematics is the study of the philosophy, philosophical and logical and/or algorithmic basis of mathematics, or, in a broader sense, the mathematical investigation of what underlies the philosophical theories concerning the natu ...

, including work 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 ...

recursion theory Computability theory, also known as recursion theory, is a branch of mathematical logic, computer science, and the theory of computation that originated in the 1930s with the study of computable functions and Turing degrees. The field has since e ...

, and

Ramsey theory Ramsey theory, named after the British mathematician and philosopher Frank P. Ramsey, is a branch of mathematics that focuses on the appearance of order in a substructure given a structure of a known size. Problems in Ramsey theory typically ask a ...

. He is known for his extensive development of the field of

reverse mathematics Reverse mathematics is a program in mathematical logic that seeks to determine which axioms are required to prove theorems of mathematics. Its defining method can briefly be described as "going backwards from the theorems to the axioms", in cont ...

founded by

Harvey Friedman __NOTOC__ Harvey Friedman (born 23 September 1948)Handbook of Philosophical Logic, , p. 38 is an American mathematical logician at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. He has worked on reverse mathematics, a project intended to derive the axi ...

, in which the goal is to determine which axioms are needed to prove certain mathematical theorems. He has also argued for the benefits of finitistic mathematical systems, such as

primitive recursive arithmetic Primitive recursive arithmetic (PRA) is a quantifier-free formalization of the natural numbers. It was first proposed by Norwegian mathematician , reprinted in translation in as a formalization of his finitist conception of the foundations of ...

, which do not include

actual infinity In the philosophy of mathematics, the abstraction of actual infinity involves the acceptance (if the axiom of infinity is included) of infinite entities as given, actual and completed objects. These might include the set of natural numbers, extend ...

. A conference in honor of Simpson's 70th birthday was organized in May 2016.

Education

Simpson graduated in 1966 from

Lehigh University Lehigh University (LU) is a private research university in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in the Lehigh Valley region of eastern Pennsylvania. The university was established in 1865 by businessman Asa Packer and was originally affiliated with the Epis ...

with a B.A. (summa cum laude) and M.A. in mathematics. He earned a Ph.D. from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

in 1971, with a dissertation entitled ''Admissible Ordinals and Recursion Theory'' and supervised by

Gerald Sacks Gerald Enoch Sacks (1933 – October 4, 2019) was a logician whose most important contributions were in recursion theory. Named after him is Sacks forcing, a forcing notion based on perfect sets and the Sacks Density Theorem, which asserts that t ...

Career

After short-term positions at

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

, 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 ...

, and the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

, Simpson became an assistant professor at the

Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsylvan ...

in 1975. At Penn State, he was Raymond N. Shibley professor from 1987 to 1992. In 2016 his wife, computer scientist

Padma Raghavan Padma Raghavan is a computer scientist who works as vice provost for research at Vanderbilt University. Raghavan graduated in 1985 from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur.. She earned her Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University in 19 ...

, moved from Penn State to

Vanderbilt University Vanderbilt University (informally Vandy or VU) is a private research university in Nashville, Tennessee. Founded in 1873, it was named in honor of shipping and rail magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided the school its initial $1-million ...

to become vice provost for research, and Simpson followed her, becoming a

research professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...

at Vanderbilt..

Selected publications

*. *. *. *. *. 2nd ed., 2009, .

References

External links

Home page at PSUGoogle scholar profile
{{DEFAULTSORT:Simpson, Steve Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 20th-century American mathematicians Lehigh University alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni Pennsylvania State University faculty Vanderbilt University faculty 21st-century American mathematicians