Haskell Curry

Haskell Brooks Curry (/hskl kri/; September 12, 1900 September

Haskell Brooks Curry
1, 1982) was an American mathematician and logician. Curry is best
known for his work in combinatory logic; while the initial concept of
combinatory logic was based on a single paper by Moses Schnfinkel,[1]
much of the development was done by Curry. Curry is also known for
Curry's paradox and the CurryHoward correspondence. There are three
programming languages named after him, Haskell, Brook and Curry, as
well as the concept of currying, a technique used for transforming
functions in mathematics and computer science.

Contents
1 Life
2 Work
3 Major publications
4 See also
5 References
Born September 12, 1900
6 Further reading Millis, Massachusetts
7 External links
Died September 1, 1982
(aged 81)
State College,
Life Pennsylvania
Curry was born on September 12, 1900, in Millis, Massachusetts, to Nationality American
Samuel Silas Curry and Anna Baright Curry, who ran a school for Alma mater Harvard University
elocution. He entered Harvard University in 1916 to study medicine but
Known for Combinatory logic
switched to mathematics before graduating in 1920. After two years of
CurryHoward
graduate work in electrical engineering at MIT, he returned to Harvard to
correspondence
study physics, earning a MA in 1924. Curry's interest in mathematical
Curry's paradox
logic started during this period when he was introduced to the Principia
Scientific career
Mathematica, the attempt by Alfred North Whiteheadand Bertrand Russell
to ground mathematics in symbolic logic. Remaining at Harvard, Curry Fields Mathematics
pursued a Ph.D. in mathematics. While he was directed by George Logic
Birkhoff to work on differential equations, his interests continued to shift Institutions Penn State
to logic. In 1927, while an instructor at Princeton University
, he discovered Universiteit van
the work of Moses Schnfinkel in combinatory logic. Schnfinkel's work Amsterdam
had anticipated much of Curry's own research, and as a consequence, he
Doctoral David Hilbert
moved to Gttingen where he could work with Heinrich Behmann and
advisor
Paul Bernays, who were familiar with Schnfinkel's work. Curry was
Doctoral Maarten Bunder
supervised by David Hilbert and worked closely with Bernays, receiving a
[2] students Edward Cogan
Ph.D. in 1930 with a dissertation on combinatory logic.
Bruce Lercher
Hilbert Levitz
In 1928, before leaving for Gttingen, Curry married Mary Virginia Kenneth Lowen
Wheatley. The couple lived in Germany while Curry completed his Luis Sanchis
dissertation, then, in 1929, moved to State College, Pennsylvania where Jonathan Seldin
Curry accepted a position at Pennsylvania State College. They had two Influences Alfred North Whitehead
children, Anne Wright Curry (July 27, 1930) and Robert Wheatley Curry Bertrand Russell
(July 6, 1934). Curry remained at Penn State for the next 37 years. He Moses Schnfinkel
spent one year at University of Chicago in 193132 under a National
Research Fellowship and one year in 193839 at the Institute for Advanced Studyin Princeton. In 1942 he took a leave of absence to
do applied mathematics for the US government during World War II. Immediately after the war he worked on the ENIAC project, in
1945 and 1946. Under a Fulbright fellowship, he collaborated with Robert Feys in Louvain, Belgium. After retiring from Penn State
in 1966, Curry accepted a position at the University of Amsterdam. In 1970, after finishing the second volume of his treatise on the
combinatory logic, Curry retired from the University of Amsterdam and returned to State College, Pennsylvania.

Haskell Curry died on September 1, 1982 in State College, Pennsylvania.

Work
The focus of Curry's work were attempts to show that combinatory logic could provide a foundation for mathematics. Towards the
end of 1933, he learned of the KleeneRosser paradox from correspondence with John Rosser. The paradox, developed by Rosser
and Stephen Kleene had proved the inconsistency of a number of related formal systems including one proposed by Alonzo Church
[2] However, unlike Church, Kleene, and
(a system which had the lambda calculus as a consistent subsystem) and Curry's own system.
ay from paradoxes."[3]
Rosser, Curry did not give up on the foundational approach, saying that he did not want to "run aw

By working in the area of Combinatory Logic for his entire career, Curry essentially became the founder and biggest name in the
field. Combinatory logic is the foundation for one style of functional programming language. The power and scope of combinatory
logic is quite similar to that of thelambda calculus of Church, and the latter formalism has tended to predominate in recent decades.

In 1947 Curry also described one of the first high-level programming languages and provided the first description of a procedure to
.[4]
convert a general arithmetic expression into a code for one-address computer

He taught at Harvard,Princeton, and from 1929 to 1966, at the Pennsylvania State University. In 1942, he published Curry's paradox.
In 1966 he became professor of mathematics at theUniversiteit van Amsterdam.

Curry also wrote and taught mathematical logic more generally; his teaching in this area culminated in his 1963 Foundations of
Mathematical Logic. His preferred philosophy of mathematics was formalism (cf. his 1951 book), following his mentor Hilbert, but
his writings betray substantial philosophical curiosity and a very open mind about
intuitionistic logic.

Major publications
"Grundlagen der Kombinatorischen Logik" [Foundations of combinatorial logic].
American Journal of Mathematics(in
German). The Johns Hopkins University Press.52 (3): 509536. 1930. JSTOR 2370619. doi:10.2307/2370619.
A theory of formal deducibility. University of Notre Dame Press. 1950.[5]

A theory of formal deducibility(2nd ed.). University of Notre Dame Press. 1957.

Outlines of a formalist philosophy of mathematics
. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science. 1951.ISBN 0444533680.
Retrieved 23 July 2012.
Leons de logique algbrique(in French). Paris: Gauthier-Villars. 1952.[6]
Curry, Haskell; Feys, Robert (1958).Combinatory Logic. I. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company
.
Foundations of Mathematical Logic. Mcgraw Hill. 1963.

Foundations of mathematical logic(Unabridged and corrected Dover ed.). New Y

ork: Dover Publications. 1977.
ISBN 0-486-63462-0. Retrieved 23 July 2012.
Combinatory Logic. II. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company
. 1972. ISBN 0720422086.
See also
Currying
Curry's paradox
Functional programming
Lambda calculus
CurryHoward correspondence
Haskell (programming language)
Brook (programming language)
Curry (programming language)

References
1. 1924. "ber die Bausteine der mathematischen Logik",Mathematische Annalen92, pp. 305316. Translated by
Stefan Bauer-Mengelberg as "On the building blocks of mathematical logic" in
Jean van Heijenoort, 1967. A Source
Book in Mathematical Logic, 18791931. Harvard Univ. Press: 35566.
2. Seldin, Jonathan. "The Logic of Curry and Church".
3. Barendregt, H.P. The Lambda Calculus: Its Syntax and Semantics
. Elsevier. p. 4.
4. Knuth, Donald E.; Pardo, Luis Trabb (1976). "Early development of programming languages". Stanford University
,
Computer Science Department, p. 22
5. Nelson, D. (1952). "Review: A theory of formal deducibility, by H. B. Curry" (http://www.ams.org/journals/bull/1952-58
-03/S0002-9904-1952-09596-3/). Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 58 (3): 415417. doi:10.1090/s0002-9904-1952-09596-3(ht
tps://doi.org/10.1090%2Fs0002-9904-1952-09596-3) .
6. Marcus, R. Barcan (1952). "Review: Leons de logique algbrique, by H. B. Curry" (http://www.ams.org/journals/bull/
1952-58-06/S0002-9904-1952-09657-9/). Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 58 (2): 673674. doi:10.1090/s0002-9904-1952-
09657-9 (https://doi.org/10.1090%2Fs0002-9904-1952-09657-9) .

Further reading
Seldin, J.P., and Hindley, J.R., eds., 1980. To H.B. Curry: Essays on combinatory logic,lambda calculus, and
formalism. Academic Press. Includes biographical essay .

External links
O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Haskell Curry", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of
St Andrews.
Curry archives provides images of several hundred manuscript pages from 1920 to 1931.
CLg. bibliography 587 pp
Haskell Brooks Curry at the Mathematics Genealogy Project

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