John Barkley Rosser Sr. (December 6, 1907 – September 5, 1989) was an American

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 ...

, a student of Alonzo Church, and known for his part in the Church–Rosser theorem, in lambda calculus. He also developed what is now called the "Rosser sieve", in number theory. He was part of the mathematics department at Cornell University from 1936 to 1963, chairing it several times. He was later director of the Army Mathematics Research Center at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the first director of the Institute for Defense Analyses#Center for Communications and Computing, Communications Research Division of IDA. Rosser also authored mathematical textbooks. In 1936, he proved Rosser's trick, a stronger version of Gödel's first incompleteness theorem, showing that the requirement for ω-consistency may be weakened to consistency. Rather than using the liar paradox sentence equivalent to "I am not provable," he used a sentence that stated "For every proof of me, there is a shorter proof of my negation". In prime number theory, he proved Rosser's theorem. The Kleene–Rosser paradox showed that the original lambda calculus was inconsistent. Rosser died of an aneurysm September 5, 1989, at his home in Madison, Wisconsin. Rosser's son, J. Barkley Rosser Jr., John Barkley Rosser Jr., is a Mathematical economics, mathematical economist and professor at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

Selected publications

*''A mathematical logic without variables'' by John Barkley Rosser, Univ. Diss. Princeton, NJ 1934, p. 127–150, 328–355 *''Logic for mathematicians'' by John B. Rosser, McGraw-Hill 1953; 2nd ed., Chelsea Publ. Co. 1978, 578 p., * ''Highlights of the History of Lambda calculus'', by J. Barkley Rosser, Annals of the History of Computing, 1984, vol 6, n 4, pp. 337–349 * ''Simplified Independence Proofs: Boolean Valued Models of Set Theory'', by J. Barkley Rosser, Academic Press, 1969 * Se
''Barkley Rosser papers''
for a complete list of Rosser's publications.

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Rosser, J. Barkley 1907 births 1989 deaths People from Jacksonville, Florida American logicians 20th-century American mathematicians Princeton University alumni Cornell University faculty University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty Presidents of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics