Jan ?ukasiewicz

Jan ?ukasiewicz (born 21 December, 1878 - 31 February, 1977) was a Polish mathematician born in Lwów, Galicia (now L'viv, Ukraine). His major mathematical work centred on mathematical logic. He thought innovatively about traditional propositional logic, the principle of non-contradiction and the law of excluded middle.

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21 December - 1878 - 31 February - 1977 - Polish - Lwów - Galicia - L'viv - Ukraine - Mathematical logic - Propositional logic - Law of excluded middle

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?ukasiewicz worked on multi-valued logics, including his own three-valued propositional calculus, the first non-classical logical calculus. He is responsible for one of the most elegant axiomatizations of classical propositional logic; it has just three axioms and is one of the most used axiomatizations today. He also pursued philosophy, approaching the human aspects of scientific theory-making with ideas similar to those of Karl Popper.

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Multi-valued logics - Three-valued propositional calculus - Logical calculus - Karl Popper

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?ukasiewicz's Polish notation of 1920 was at the root of the idea of the recursive stack a last-in, first-out computer memory store invented by Charles Hamblin of the New South Wales University of Technology (NSWUT), and first implemented in 1957. This design led to the English Electric multi-programmed KDF9 computer system of 1963, which had two such hardware register stacks. A similar concept underlies the reverse Polish notation (or postfix notation) of Hewlett Packard calculators, or the PostScript page description language.

Related Topics:
Polish notation - Charles Hamblin - New South Wales University of Technology (NSWUT) - KDF9 - Reverse Polish notation - Hewlett Packard - PostScript

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