Hartley Rogers Jr. (July 6, 1926 – July 17, 2015) was a mathematician who worked in

computability 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 sinc ...

, and was a professor in the Mathematics Department of 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 th ...

Biography

Born in 1926 in

Buffalo, New York Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York (behind only New York City) and the seat of Erie County. It is at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, and is across the Canadian border from Sou ...

, he studied under

Alonzo Church Alonzo Church (June 14, 1903 – August 11, 1995) was an American mathematician, computer scientist, logician, philosopher, professor and editor who made major contributions to mathematical logic and the foundations of theoretical computer scien ...

Princeton Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nin ...

, and received his Ph.D. there in 1952. He served on the MIT faculty from 1956 until his death, July 17, 2015. He is survived by his wife, Dr. Adrianne E. Rogers, by his three children, Hartley R. Rogers, Campbell D.K. Rogers, and Caroline R. Broderick, and by his 10 grandchildren. At MIT he had been involved in many scholarly extracurricular activities, including running SPUR (Summer Program in Undergraduate Research) for MIT undergraduates, overseeing the mathematics section of RSI (

Research Science Institute The Research Science Institute (RSI) is an international summer research program for high school students. RSI is sponsored by the Center for Excellence in Education (CEE) and hosted by MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. RSI brings together the top S ...

) for advanced high school students, and coaching the MIT Putnam exam team for nearly two decades starting in 1990, including the years 2003 and 2004 when MIT won for the first time since 1979. He also ran a seminar called 18.S34: Mathematical Problem Solving for MIT freshmen. Rogers is known within the MIT undergraduate community also for having developed a multivariable calculus course (18.022: Multivariable Calculus with Theory) with the explicit goal of providing a firm mathematical foundation for the study of physics. In 2005 he announced that he would no longer be teaching the course himself, but it is likely that it will continue to be taught in a similar manner in the future. He is remembered for his witty mathematical comments during lectures as well as his tradition of awarding Leibniz Cookies and Fig Newtons to top performers in his class. An avid oarsman, he was most recently a member of the Cambridge Boat Club on the Charles River, Cambridge, Massachusetts. In his spare time, he served for many years as the Chaplain for the World Indoor Rowing Championships as part of the C.R.A.S.H.-B. Sprints Board of Directors.

Mathematical work

Rogers worked in

mathematical logic Mathematical logic is the study of 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 forma ...

, particularly recursion theory, and wrote the classic text ''Theory of Recursive Functions and Effective Computability''. The Rogers equivalence theorem is named after him. His doctoral students included Patrick Fischer,

Louis Hodes Louis Hodes (June 19, 1934 – June 30, 2008) was an American mathematician, computer scientist, and cancer researcher. Early life and computer science work Louis Hodes got his Bachelor of Science (B.S.) from the Polytechnic Institute of Br ...

, Carl Jockusch, Andrew Kahr,

David Luckham David Luckham is an emeritus professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University. As a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he was one of the implementers of the first systems for the programming language L ...

, Rohit Parikh, David Park, and John Stillwell. Rogers won the Lester R. Ford Award in 1965 for his expository article ''Information Theory''.

Selected works

* * * * Hartley Rogers Jr., ''The Theory of Recursive Functions and Effective Computability'', MIT Press, (paperback), (textbook)

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Rogers, Hartley Jr. 1926 births 2015 deaths 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians American logicians Princeton University alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science faculty Logicians People from Winchester, Massachusetts