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Wilhelm Ackermann

German mathematician (1896–1962)

Summary

German mathematician (1896–1962)

Field	Value
name	Wilhelm Ackermann
image	Ackermann Wilhelm.jpg
caption	Wilhelm Ackermann in
birth_date
birth_place	Herscheid, German Empire
death_date
death_place	Lüdenscheid, West Germany
nationality	German
field	Mathematics
alma_mater	University of Göttingen
doctoral_advisor	David Hilbert
known_for

Wilhelm Friedrich Ackermann (; ; 29 March 1896 – 24 December 1962) was a German mathematician and logician best known for his work in mathematical logic and the Ackermann function, an important example in the theory of computation.

Biography

Ackermann was born in Herscheid, Germany, and was awarded a Ph.D. by the University of Göttingen in 1925 for his thesis Begründung des "tertium non datur" mittels der Hilbertschen Theorie der Widerspruchsfreiheit, which was a consistency proof of arithmetic apparently without Peano induction (although it did use e.g. induction over the length of proofs). This was one of two major works in proof theory in the 1920s and the only one following Hilbert's school of thought. From 1929 until 1948, he taught at the Arnoldinum Gymnasium in Burgsteinfurt, and then at Lüdenscheid until 1961. He was also a corresponding member of the Akademie der Wissenschaften (Academy of Sciences) in Göttingen, and was an honorary professor at the University of Münster.

In 1928, Ackermann helped David Hilbert turn his 1917 – 22 lectures on introductory mathematical logic into a text, Principles of Mathematical Logic. This text contained the first exposition ever of first-order logic, and posed the problem of its completeness and decidability (Entscheidungsproblem). Ackermann went on to construct consistency proofs for set theory (1937), full arithmetic (1940), type-free logic (1952), and a new axiomatization of set theory (1956).

Later in life, Ackermann continued working as a high school teacher. He kept engaged in the field of research and published many contributions to the foundations of mathematics until the end of his life. He died in Lüdenscheid, West Germany in December 1962.

Bibliography

1. "On Hilbert's construction of the real numbers" in Jean van Heijenoort, ed., 1967. From Frege to Gödel: A Source Book in Mathematical Logic, 1879–1931. Harvard Univ. Press: 493–507.
1. "Zur Widerspruchsfreiheit der Zahlentheorie", Mathematische Annalen, vol. 117, pp 162–194.
1950 (1928). (with David Hilbert) Principles of Mathematical Logic. Chelsea. Translation of 1938 German edition.
1. Solvable cases of the decision problem. North Holland.

References

"Wilhelm Ackermann".

Wikipedia Source

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1896-births 1962-deaths computability-theorists people-from-lüdenscheid people-from-the-province-of-westphalia university-of-göttingen-alumni academic-staff-of-the-university-of-münster german-lutherans 20th-century-german-mathematicians german-logicians 20th-century-german-philosophers 20th-century-german-male-writers 20th-century-lutherans members-of-the-göttingen-academy-of-sciences-and-humanities

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