Stephen Cole Kleene

Science Dateline: January 5

Stephen Cole Kleene,  Mathematician and Logician

Worked on recursion theory that laid the foundation of theoretical computer science.

Stephen Cole Kleene (1909-1994), American mathematician and logician, was born in Hartford, Connecticut, on January 5, 1909. He invented 'regular expressions,' and was a leading American advocate of 'mathematical intuitionism.'  With his mathematical logic, he worked on recursion theory that laid the foundation of theoretical computer science.

A number of mathematical concepts are named after him:

• Kleene algebra
• Kleene fixpoint theorem
• Kleene hierarchy
• Kleene recursion theorem
• Kleene star.

Stephen Cole Kleene was awarded two distinguished honors:

• Speaker at the International Congresses of Mathematicians, Edinburgh 1958 - Title of lecture to congress: "Mathematical Logic: Constructive and Non-Constructive Operations."


• American Mathematical Society (AMS) Prize 1983... for three important papers which formed the basis for later developments in generalized recursion theory and descriptive set theory "Arithmetical predicates and function quantifiers", "On the forms of the predicates in the theory of constructive ordinals (second paper)", and "Hierarchies of number-theoretic predicates".

Resources:

Britanica.com.

www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Biographies/Kleene.html 

www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/PictDisplay/Kleene.html  (For Pictures)


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